Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

CIVIL CONTINGENCIES FUND

Accounts ordered,
of the Civil Contingencies Fund, 1953–54, showing (1) the Receipts and Payments in connection with the Fund in the year ended 31st day of March, 1954 and (2) the Distribution of the Capital of the Fund at the commencement and close of the year; with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon.—[Mr. H. Brooke.]

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Fabrics (Labelling)

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the Women's Organisations Committee for Economic Information, meeting in Glasgow under the auspices of the Treasury, expressed concern at the lack of exact reliable labelling of materials; and what steps are proposed by his Department to remedy this deficiency.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Thorneycroft): I understand this matter was mentioned but that the committee has made no recommendations. On the second part of the Question, I have nothing to add to my reply of 3rd February to the hon. Member.

Miss Burton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these women in Glasgow were well equipped for judging consumer goods? Is he also aware that they were not able to form an opinion on new fabrics and mixtures because of the introduction of nylon, terylene, and Ardil, and is he prepared to do anything at all about the proper labelling of these fabrics?

Mr. Thorneycroft: As the hon. Lady knows, I have a higher opinion of the ability of the housewives of this country to judge consumer needs than she has.

Western Germany (Talks)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the President of the Board of Trade the subjects which he discussed recently with trade delegations from West Germany and East Germany, respectively; and to make a statement indicating how the results of these conversations will affect British import and export trade.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The trade talks with Western Germany last December were mainly concerned with the negotiation of quotas for 1955 for the relatively small range of goods still subject to import restrictions,
There have been no discussions with any trade delegation from East Germany.

Mr. Hughes: Does the Minister not realise that there are important gaps in trade, industrial and commercial relations between this country and the two parts of Germany? Did his talks have nothing to do with this, and is he doing nothing about those gaps?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The hon. and learned Gentleman knows that we have to keep them rather separate.

Merchandise (Quality Marks)

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware of the disquiet among the shopping public, and reputable manufacturers, at the lack of quality guarantees for merchandise; and if, where trade or industry refuse to provide such standard quality marks, the Government will authorise the British Standards Institution to issue such quality marks itself.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I am in favour of the wider adoption of standards and quality marks, but I cannot believe this would be achieved by issuing such marks without the co-operation of the manufacturers concerned.

Miss Burton: What does the right hon. Gentleman propose to do about the guarantees which he gave to this House as long ago as 1952? Is he aware that these guarantees, from the rayon and cotton industries, were that standards


would be provided, that these standards have not been provided, and that the right hon. Gentleman has done nothing about it?

Mr. Thorneycroft: As the hon. Lady knows, I am not altogether satisfied with the progress of the introduction of standard marks in the industry, but I am satisfied that we are adopting the right procedure through the British Standards Institution.

Miss Burton: What consolation is it to the consumers to know that the right hon. Gentleman is not satisfied if he does nothing about it?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The consumers of this country at the present time have a very wide choice of high-quality goods.

Cotton Textile Imports

Mr. Burke: asked the President of the Board of Trade the total value of cotton textile imports into this country in 1953 and 1954, respectively; and what percentage in each year was due to imports from India.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Imports of cotton textiles from all countries were valued at £28 million in 1954; this compares with £15 million in 1953 and an average of £33 million for the six years from 1948–53. Imports from India were 8 per cent. of the value in 1953 and 25 per cent. of the value in 1954.

Mr. Burke: Does the Minister realise that this means that in 12 months the value of Indian imports has gone up from £1 million to £7 million, that that cannot go on for very much longer, and what is he going to do about it?

Mr. Thorneycroft: What it means is that the imports for 1954 went up above those of 1953 but were lower than the average for 1948–53.

Mr. Burke: But during the last year they have increased very much more proportionately than total imports and India is the main culprit in this matter. What is the right hon. Gentleman doing about it?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The hon. Gentleman is quite right in saying that India has been the principal supplier of the increased imports. With regard to

action that could be taken, I would refer the hon. Member to the very full statement that I made on a previous occasion.

Mr. H. Wilson: The President knows perfectly well that in the earlier period we were only too glad to get the cotton because Lancashire could not supply it and it was needed for re-export. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that while we on this side of the House would not wish to invoke protectionism on behalf of Lancashire against fair trade and fair imports coming into this country, this trade is particularly unfair because the Indian manufacturers get their raw cotton at prices about 1Od. or 1s. cheaper than our manufacturers do, and even if our weavers worked for no wages at all we could not meet this competition? Therefore, what will the right hon. Gentleman do about it?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am quite aware of the arguments raised on this matter. The right hon. Gentleman must realise that they go very wide. Raw materials in this country are on occasion supplied to manufacturers below world prices. On the general question of action to be taken, I have nothing at this stage to add to what I have said on previous occasions.

New Factories and Extensions

Mr. Burke: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many new firms, new factories or extensions to existing factories are at present in Burnley as a consequence of his Department's direction or support since February, 1953, when the town was scheduled as part of a Development Area.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: North-east Lancashire was made a Development Area on 3rd March, 1953. Two extensions approved since that date have been completed in the County Borough of Burnley, extensions to four other factories are under construction, at least one firm new to Burnley has acquired premises there, and within three miles of Burnley the Board of Trade is building the largest factory which it has ever undertaken in any Development Area.

Mr. Burke: These extensions are not made at the expense of the Government but by the local authority. What extensions have been undertaken by the Government? In any case, does the Minister


realise that when this factory is completed, it will employ only 1,500, whereas the leakage from the area is 2,300 insured persons per year?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I will not split hairs as to who should take the credit. Let us all share in that, and welcome the fact that all this development is going on, and thriving, around Burnley.

Mr. Burke: The Government are bringing only one firm to the area and are neglecting to offer grants in prepared sites.

Mr. Gower: asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) how many applications in Wales for factory building or extension between the sizes of 5,000 and 20,000 square feet were authorised in 1953 and 1954, respectively; and how many were refused;
(2) how many applications in Wales for factory building or extensions between the figures of £5,000 and £20,000 were granted in 1953 and 1954, respectively; and how many were refused.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The area figures were 44 in 1953 and 52 in 1954. None were refused. I have not got the value figures.

Mr. Gower: Does that represent an increase over 1953 or not?

Mr. Thorneycroft: It is an increase in the area figures, I believe, but I should like to look at the point again.

Mr. Gower: asked the President of the Board of Trade what proportion of applications in the United Kingdom for factory building or extension were granted in Wales in 1953 and 1954, respectively; and what proportion of those refused were in Wales in each of those years.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: 5·7 per cent. and 3·7 per cent. were aproved, and none refused.

Textile Industries (Home Market)

Mr. Burke: asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of the fact that the overseas market in Lancashire textiles is shrinking through unfair foreign competition, what steps are being taken to preserve the home-trade market for Lancashire textiles.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Without commenting on the reasons advanced by the hon. Member, I think he is right in drawing attention to the fact that the problem facing the Lancashire textile industries is primarily one of falling exports rather than rising imports. On the second part of his Question, the home market for United Kingdom textiles is protected by a tariff on all imports other than those from the Commonwealth, and limited by a quota in the case of Japan under our trade and payments agreement with her. United Kingdom production of cloth today commands over 90 per cent. of the home market.

Mr. Burke: Does the Minister realise that drills from Bombay are being quoted in this country at 19¼ pence per yard, and check tea-towels at 8s. 3d. per dozen, and is the home trade to go the same way as the export trade? Is the Minister doing anything to protect the home trade?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The hon. Gentleman asked for the measures of protection, which I have set out clearly in the answer to the Question.

Mr. Fort: What representations has my right hon. Friend received from the official organisations of the industry setting out detailed proposals to protect the home market from imports of Indian cloth?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Up to the present I have had no detailed or specific proposals for action, although many people have said that action ought to be taken. I have invited the Cotton Board to come and see me and to put before me the kind of action which it would regard as appropriate, if it were decided that action should be taken.

Mr. H. Wilson: Since the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade last week did not seem to be aware that Lancashire cotton piece-goods exports are lower now than in any peace-time period for over a century, will the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that one of the main reasons for this, quite apart from Indian competition, is that some of the warnings we gave in this House a year ago about the Anglo-Japanese Trade and Payments Agreement are now bearing fruit, particularly in certain colonial markets?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The fact that the Anglo-Japanese Trade and Payments Agreement fixes a precise and definite limit upon the imports of Japanese cloth into this market at the present time——

Mr. Wilson: On a point of order——

Mr. Thorneycroft: One moment, let me finish the answer. With regard to exports, it would scarcely help the export trade of this country in textiles if I were to cut off the supply of Indian gray upon which a substantial part of the trade is based.

Mr. Burke: Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I will raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Indian and Ceylon Tea (Export Duty)

Mr. E. Fletcher: asked the President of the Board of Trade what discussions he had with the Prime Ministers of India and Ceylon during their recent visits to this country on the export duty on tea.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: None, Sir.

Mr. Fletcher: But does not the President of the Board of Trade realise that the people of this country are convinced that it is entirely the fault of the Government that the price of tea is so absurdly high, which is borne out by what the Prime Minister of Ceylon said? Does the Minister really mean that he did not take any opportunity of having discussions about this matter with either of those Prime Ministers during their recent visit?

Mr. Thorneycroft: With the hon. Gentleman, the wish is father to the thought in this matter. I do not think I can add to the full statements and answers given on this matter by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food.

Weights and Measures (Report)

Mr. Owen: asked the President of the Board of Trade what action he pro poses to take on the Hodgson Report on Weights and Measures.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I have nothing to add to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mrs. Slater) on 9th December last.

Mr. Owen: Is the Minister aware that this matter is of considerable concern to the fruit trade, which is most anxious for a definite decision? Will he be good enough to give the matter urgent consideration?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Yes, I will certainly bear in mind what the hon. Gentleman says about this important subject, but there can be no question of legislation this Session.

National Research Development Corporation

Mr. Willey: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he intends to take, in view of the major difficulties which have faced the National Research Development Corporation as described in the Corporation's Report for 1953–54.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: They have already been taken. As the Development Corporation made clear in its Report, one of the difficulties which confronted it was dealt with by legislation, one in conjunction with the Board of Trade, and the third it is dealing with.

Domestic Coal Deliveries (Weights)

Mr. Hamilton: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that some retail coal merchants are still delivering domestic coal without any kind of invoice and without carrying scales on which bags of coal might be checked by the consumer; and if he will take additional steps to safeguard householders against unfair trading practices in this matter.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Under the Weights and Measures Acts, the enforcement of which rests with local authorities, weight tickets are required in the case of coal only when sales exceed 2 cwts. These Acts do not require coal vehicles to carry scales, but local authorities may prescribe this by by-law.

Mr. Hamilton: Has the attention of the Minister been drawn to a report published by the Middlesex County Council a month or two ago, showing that its inspectors had examined about 9,000 bags of coal and that in one in four there was short-weight? When will the Minister, in conjunction with the local authorities, take active steps to show the tiniest flicker of interest in the interests of the consumer?

Mr. Thorneycroft: My thoughts were more with Fife than Middlesex, but I am grateful for the information, and as the hon. Gentleman has a Question down about what is happening in Fife, I will reserve my fire for that one.

Mr. Hamilton: I will ask that Question now.

Mr. Hamilton: asked the President of the Board of Trade what information he has concerning the nature of the checks made on coal deliveries by the inspectors of weights and measures in Scotland; and whether he is satisfied that such checks are adequate to safeguard the interests of the domestic consumer.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I am informed that 25,695 bags and 659 loads of coal were checked by inspectors of weights and measures in Scotland during the course of 12 months. I have no reason to believe that they checked too few.

Mr. Hamilton: Is the Minister aware that I am not so much interested in how many were checked as in how many there was short-weight? Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House how many prosecutions took place as a result of those inspections, and the nature of the fines imposed?

Mr. Thorneycroft: There were 1,992 bags and 48 loads of coal which did not contain the correct weight. There were 49 successful prosecutions about those, and there were also 36 successful prosecutions under by-laws for other related offences, such as not carrying weighing machines. I do not think I know the extent of the fines.

Anglo-American Films Agreement

Mr. F. M. Bennett: asked the President of the Board of Trade the duration of the current Anglo-American Films Agreement.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Until 24th September, 1955, unless renewed.

Mr. Bennett: As, under present arrangements, 70 per cent. of all films shown over here are American, while of films shown in America only 1 per cent. are British, does not my right hon. Friend think that is too great a disparity, even taking into account the difference in size between the two national industries; and

when the time comes to negotiate a new agreement, will he do his best to impress on our American friends the need for a greater degree of reciprocity than has been shown up to now?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I much appreciate what my hon. Friend has in mind, but he will recognise that the exhibitors are separate from the producers and those with whom we are negotiating these Agreements, but I am not unsympathetic to the views he has expressed.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Can the President of the Board of Trade say why dollar expenditure on this import, much of which is second rate, is going on at a time when our gold and dollar reserves are going down, our imports are excessive, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is very worried about the whole situation?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Largely because a lot of people like to see these American films.

Coal Imports

Mr. Nabarro: asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) what applications he has received to allow import into the United Kingdom, from the Eastern Zone of Germany, of brown coal briquettes of good calorific value and less smoky in the burning than bituminous coal; and, in view of Great Britain now being one of the largest importers of coal in the world, what steps he is taking to encourage imports from such Iron Curtain countries as may be able to contribute to Britain's coal deficit;
(2) whether, in view of Great Britain now being one of the world's largest coal-importing countries, he will facilitate private enterprise participation in all coal-importing transactions, with a view to assuring adequate competition;
(3) what applications his Department has received from bodies and firms, other than the National Coal Board, seeking permission to import coal into Great Britain; and how far the policy of Her Majesty's Government is to grant mono poly status to the National Coal Board in respect of all coal imports into Great Britain, or whether private merchanting firms will also be allowed to participate in such imports.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Apart from occasional shipments of coal from the Irish Republic, I have received in the last six


months one application from a private trader to import coal briquettes from the Eastern Zone of Germany and two applications to import sample quantities of coal from other sources. These applications have been approved.
All proposals to import coal, whether by the National Coal Board or by private traders, have to be considered in the light of the United Kingdom supply position and the overseas expenditure involved. As regards imports of coal from Iron Curtain countries, I understand that the National Coal Board is already importing from Poland.

Mr. Nabarro: Might I ask my right hon. Friend two points arising from his reply? First, is it the Government's policy to encourage the increasing participation of private-enterprise merchants in the import of coal? Secondly, why should not coal now be placed on open general licence, as the United Kingdom is the largest importer of coal in the world, and will this year be importing £25 million worth of coal and probably a great deal more next year?

Mr. Thorneycroft: In reply to my hon. Friend's first supplementary question, I do not think there is anything to discourage them, because the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act, 1946, does not confer a coal importing monopoly on the National Coal Board. With regard to the second supplementary question, the arrangements are simply that coal is placed on specific licensing, or open individual licensing in the case of the National Coal Board, and the total amounts are discussed with the Board. I think that is a perfectly satisfactory method. If anybody wants to import coal, all he has to do is to ask for a licence.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: Is not the high standard of fuel produced by Germany due to the fact that the industry there is run by private enterprise?

Mr. T. Williams: Has the right hon. Gentleman any information about the price of the imported coal? Will the private importer have to make his price plus the profit out of his own sales without affecting the National Coal Board?

Mr. Thorneycroft: If we are to go into questions about the prices and quantities

of coal, I think the matter should be referred to the Minister of Fuel and Power.

Mr. Nabarro: In view of the controversial nature of my right hon. Friend's reply, I give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Company Bankruptcies

Mr. Lewis: asked the President of the Board of Trade the number of the companies declared bankrupt in 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954; and how many of these were tea companies.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Four hundred and seven, 436, 421, 416, and none.

Mr. Lewis: Can the President explain that, because the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food stated on Monday week that the poor old tea companies are in dire straits and hence have had to put up the price of tea to prevent some of them from "going broke"? Does he remember how many tea companies have "gone broke" over the last few years? Is there any fear of them "going broke" in view of the continual rise in price?

Mr. Thorneycroft: It seems to me that the supplementary question should be directed to the Minister of Food.

Indian Cloth (Imports)

Mrs. Castle: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has considered the proposals put to his Department by representatives of cotton employers and trade unions on 15th February on the problems created in Lancashire by the import of Indian cloth; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I have very carefully considered the report which my right hon. Friend the Minister of State made to me about the meetings in Manchester on 15th February. I am now awaiting the specific suggestions which I have invited the Cotton Board to make to me upon this topic.

Mrs. Castle: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, when the Minister of State met the master cotton spinners and the textile workers in Manchester last week, they passed a resolution expressing complete dissatisfaction with the Government's activity in this matter? Can he tell the House what there is to stop him


from getting in touch with the Indian Government now to see if some voluntary arrangement cannot be made to limit this disastrous flood of unfairly competitive imports?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think it would be better to await the visit of the Cotton Board, which represents all sections of the industry, including the trade unions, to me to make any specific proposals which it thinks appropriate.

Mr. H. Wilson: Will the right hon. Gentleman suggest to the Indian Government that they might take the export duty off tea and put it on cotton piece-goods instead?

Sir A. Colegate: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind, when considering this problem, the possible repercussions on our large and growing exports to America which are below the cost of production in America?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I certainly shall bear in mind in all these matters—I hope we all shall—the important effects upon our whole commercial policy of precipitate action in a field of this sort.

Lieut.-Colonel Schofield: Will not my right hon. Friend agree that the main reason for the cheapness of the Indian cotton exports is the concealed subsidy which is granted by the Indian Government to the Indian mill owners, and that if the subsidy were removed Lancashire would be able to cope with the Indian competition? Is he aware that all that Lancashire is asking is to be able to compete on level terms?

Mr. Thorneycroft: This is a complex field, and I hope that hon. Members will be a little careful even about bandying terms like "concealed subsidy" when they are considering the prices of raw materials supplied to industry.

Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Products (Imports)

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware of the heavy increase in the value of imports of medicinal and pharmaceutical products during 1954, as compared with 1953; and to what extent this increase is due to increased imports from the United States of America.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Yes, Sir. Nearly 60 per cent.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the case of certain products, such as antibiotics, the imports are more than double those of the previous figure? Will he do something more to encourage home production of these products, in view of the many firms in this country which are producing goods of that kind?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I imagine that the imports have increased because some of the new drugs have been developed and produced in the United States, and I think it is right that the people of this country should have access to them.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in many cases this involves some fairly heavy payments to the United States, which makes a considerable drain on our dollar resources?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am as anxious as anyone to conserve our dollar resources. We have to spend them wisely. However, I should have thought that we should have hesitated before we restricted the supply of up-to-date drugs for healing sickness.

Cotton Industry (Employment)

Mr. Jay: asked the President of the Board of Trade the Government's proposals for averting the threat of increasing unemployment in the cotton industry.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: There is very little unemployment in the cotton industry at present. Future trends will depend on many factors and not the least of these is confidence. The industry's problems are associated at least as much with exports as with imports and I have arranged to discuss these problems with the Cotton Board.

Mr. Jay: Is there not already a good deal of short-time working? Is it not better to avert unemployment rather than wait for it actually to break out? Does not the President think it is time to make a high-level approach to the Indian Government to try to get trade on to a rather fairer basis, as both the raw material prices and the respective tariffs are at present on an unfair basis?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The short-time working in cotton and rayon spinning and


weaving last week was about 1 per cent. About half of it was in the fine spinning section, which is not directly affected by the foreign grey cloth imports. I do not say that that means that foreign grey is not a problem; I am merely giving the facts about the short-time working. I think that, on the whole, it would be better to await the discussion which I am to have with the Cotton Board, when we can go into these facts and see what detailed proposals can be put forward.

Mr. S. Silverman: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that one way of coping with the threat of unemployment in the cotton industry is to diversify industry in that area, and that it was with that object that more than a year ago he declared part of the area a Development Area, but that so far there is the deepest and most widespread disappointment at the results of his endeavours?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me and the House of the fact that it is in that very area that we are in process of building the largest development factory ever undertaken by the Board of Trade under any Government.

Mr. J. T. Price: What causes the President to suppose that at his proposed interview with the Cotton Board he will be in a position to give it better answers than the Parliamentary Secretary was able to give at the meeting last week in Manchester? Why could the answers not be given then?

Mr. Thorneycroft: What I am asking the Cotton Board to do is to come along to me and to make certain proposals and suggestions about the kind of specific action which it has in mind.

Mr. Drayson: Will the President consider publishing the details of the discussions with the Cotton Board as a White Paper after the discussions have been concluded?

Mr. Thorneycroft: We had better see what the discussions are.

Mr. Gaitskell: While it is no doubt desirable that the President of the Board of Trade should have further talks with the Cotton Board, is it not time that he made plans for serious talks with the Indian Government? Does he not agree that there is no doubt that the Indian

producers do have a definitely unfair advantage in the price of the raw material, and that there is great unfairness in regard to the tariff structures in our country and in India? If these are the facts, is it not high time that the President took this matter seriously and arranged, if necessary, to go to India himself to discuss the matter?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Very full discussions upon these issues did take place between the Indian Government and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State. Certainly I am not saying that that is the last word between us and the Indian Government. But, at the same time, it would be very appropriate if first of all we had further discussions with the Cotton Board about imports of grey cloth. On the export side, I should like to emphasise again that I do not think that it is a fair situation that they should be charging the rates of tariff that they are charging at the present time. That is a very difficult thing for them to defend.

Mr. H. Wilson: Is the President aware that the Minister of State last week was reported as having specifically said in Manchester, in answer to a question, that he did not have negotiations with the Indian Government? Now the President is telling us the the Minister of State had discussions with the Indian Government. Can we be told exactly what did happen?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Certainly it is very important to emphasise that no question of negotiating the Indian Trade Agreement arose at that time and it has not arisen at this.

Monopolies Commission

Mrs. Mann: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he has considered the protests of Scotland's 2,500 retail drapers against price-fixing in the drapery and fashion trades, which have been sent to him; if he is aware that agreements which will completely eliminate competition in the retail trade are being made; and if he will refer these practices to the Monopolies Commission.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I have noted these representations. It would, I think, be wise to await the Commission's Report on its existing inquiry under Section 15 of the Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Act, 1948, which has a close bearing on these matters.

Mrs. Mann: Is the President aware that we have now reached the stage where to have a Question on the Order Paper to him indicates the triumph of hope over experience? Would he take a sniff of analgesia and try to give birth to an idea?

Mr. Wilkins: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can now say when the report of the Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission may be expected on the Cellophane paper manufacturing industry.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: No reference on this matter has been made to the Commission.

Mr. Wilkins: Is the President of the Board of Trade aware that it is a considerable time since I referred certain correspondence to him? Has he given consideration to the representations made therein? If so, is he not aware that it does appear that a price ring operates in this industry; and would that not be sufficient reason for referring it to the Commission?

Mr. Thorneycroft: As I understand it, Cellophane is a trade name, and one really cannot accuse of monopoly a man who is merely manufacturing a product under a trade name. If the hon. Member has any other information, I shall be happy to look into it.

Mr. Wilkins: I have submitted the correspondence to the President of the Board of Trade through his Parliamentary Secretary, and I expected that he would have looked at that correspondence before answering my Question today.

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am anxious to help the hon. Member in any way I can. On the information at present at my disposal, I do not see that this can be a case for the Monopolies Commission, but if there is further information, I shall be happy to look into it.

Mr. Wilkins: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has now considered the terms of a resolution passed by Bristol City Council on 8th February, and submitted to him, protesting against the price maintenance activities of the petroleum and diesel oil industry in maintaining and increasing prices by collective action; and whether he will now refer this industry to the Restrictive Practices Commission for investigation as requested by the council.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I have noted the terms of the resolution, and, as I have already told the House, I will continue to bear in mind the supply of petroleum products as a possible matter for reference to the Commission.

Mr. Wilkins: The President of the Board of Trade recently answered questions on this subject, and said that he had the matter under consideration. May I ask him whether he has now concluded his consideration, and, in view of the very serious situation which has arisen in relation both to municipal and privately-owned public service undertakings, many of which have had to increase fares, will he come to some conclusion about referring this industry to the Commission? Further, has his attention been called to a statement by the Economic Commission for Europe on this subject?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Both the previous Government and this one have kept to what I think is a sensible rule, which is not to debate possible candidates for the Commission in advance of them being referred to it.

Merchandise Marks Acts (Prosecutions)

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement giving details of the machinery in his Department for the initiation of prosecutions under the Merchandise Marks Acts and, as shoppers are not clear as to the scope of his Department in such matters, if he is now prepared to act for the general public where complaints of worthless merchandise are concerned.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I have no statutory responsibility for determining the worth of any particular merchandise. Arrangements are made by my Prosecutions Branch to investigate complaints of alleged offences against the Merchandise Marks Acts. Proceedings are then instituted where warranted by the evidence disclosed.

Miss Burton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the public is getting rather tired of this type of answer from him? Will he please give a straight answer to a straight question? Will he tell the House whether, if somebody buys some goods in a shop and those goods


are worthless, and the shop refuses to do anything about it and that complaint is sent to the Board of Trade, he is prepared to take it up?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I have emphasised quite clearly that the Board of Trade is not established to determine the worth or value of individual merchandise. On the question of the Merchandise Marks Acts, between July, 1945, and October, 1951, there were two prosecutions, both successful. Between 10th October, 1951, and 21st February, 1955, there have been no fewer than 19, of which 16 were successful.

Miss Burton: Owing to the very unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment as soon as possible.

Lace Exports

Mr. J. Harrison: asked the President of the Board of Trade the comparative figures of the exports of lace nets and curtains for 1952, 1953, and 1954.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Total lace exports other than by parcel post were £4·6, £4·7, and £4·7 million.

Mr. Harrison: About 12 months ago the President assured me that he was concerned about the fall in exports in this trade, and promised to take a personal interest in these figures in the future. Is he satisfied with the position as reflected in these figures?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Both the hon. Member and I can be satisfied. The industry has done very well, and is exporting well over one-third of its total production.

Exports

Mr. J. Harrison: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps the Government propose to take to ascertain the causes for the decline in exports from the United Kingdom, especially between this country and Canada; and what action he proposes to take to remedy this position.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Exports from the United Kingdom have gone up, not down. In 1954 we sold a record amount both in volume and in value. This record was achieved despite the fall in exports to Canada due to a shrinkage in Canadian demand, which was felt equally by

Canadian manufacturers. I am confident that this is only a temporary phase, and that our manufacturers and exporters will continue their efforts to retain their share of this important market.

Mr. Harrison: I wanted to direct the President's attention to those countries, our exports to which have fallen, and Canada was a particular example. Is he satisfied that all the steps he has taken up to the present are the only steps to remedy this very difficult and dangerous position? I think that the figure is a 12 per cent. fall in the export trade.

Mr. Thorneycroft: Both industry and the Government have done very well in this situation.

Ships (Export to Eastern Europe)

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether agreement has yet been reached with the other Western countries concerned about the export of ships to Eastern Europe; and what further discussions are taking place on this question.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The present control on the export of ships to Eastern Europe is operated in agreement with the other countries concerned: discussions about these controls are going ahead.

Mr. Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that on Thursday it will be exactly a year ago that the Prime Minister called for greater trade and greater exports to Eastern Europe, and that it took the right hon. Gentleman four or five months to announce the first series of changes in the restrictions? He said at that time that he could not reach agreement on ships. When does he expect to be able to reach agreement with the other countries about this question of ships, when he has already taken 12 months?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The right hon. Gentleman is quite right in pointing out the wide extensions in East-West trade achieved as a result of the efforts of Her Majesty's Government. The situation to date about ships is that certain ships are subject to an embargo and certain others are sold under a procedure whereby a contract is entered into and notification given afterwards. There has been some discussion as to whether restrictions should be tightened up or not, but on the whole I have seen no proposals which I think


would be appropriate from the strategic point of view, or helpful to the Government. These discussions are, however, still going ahead in Paris, and we should await their results.

Motor Car Electrical Accessories (Factories)

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many applications by foreign firms to establish factories in the United Kingdom for motor car electrical accessories have been received and approved in the last three years.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: To obtain this information would require exhaustive inquiries in the regions, but the effort and expense would not be justified.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: That reply does not sound very satisfactory to me. Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that he will do what he can to encourage unfettered competition with the powerful monopoly already operating in this field of exorbitant profits by the firm of Messrs. Joseph Lucas, Limited?

Mr. Thorneycroft: It is very nice to hear the voice of unfettered competition coming from the opposite benches.

Mr. Edelman: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is in fact a tyrannical near-monopoly in. motor car electrical accessories which foist expensive and often inefficient products on the industry as a whole? Will not the right hon. Gentleman do something to introduce the breath of competition into the motor industry?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Mr. Speaker, I think that the hon. Gentleman hopes to catch your eye next Thursday.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

South Africa (Gold Sales)

Mr. Gaitskell: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will make a statement on the decision of the South African Government no longer to guarantee the sale of a minimum quantity of gold to the United Kingdom for sterling.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. R. A. Butler): As the South African Minister of Finance announced on 4th February, our two Governments agreed

in October last that the special arrangements on gold should come to an end at the end of 1954. Under those arrangements, South Africa undertook to sell to the United Kingdom a minimum guaranteed quantity of 4 million ounces of gold (approximately £50 million) each year; further gold could be earned to the extent that it was not required to defray South Africa's hard currency expenditure, or to maintain her own reserves.
In practice the level of trade between South Africa and the non-dollar area has been such that more than the minimum amount guaranteed has been earned, and the central reserves benefited directly or indirectly to the extent of nearly £100 million from sales of South African gold in London in 1954. In these circumstances we readily agreed with the Union Government that the guarantee had fulfilled its purpose and should be discontinued. I should like to record our appreciation of the assistance which the Union Government have afforded to the central reserves over a crucial period.

Mr. Gaitskell: In view of the fact that the South African Government have now withdrawn both the concessions which they made to us in the Agreement of 1950 and 1951, relating to trade on the one hand and gold payments on the other, does the Chancellor still regard South Africa as being within the sterling area?

Mr. Butler: I think that that is an unnecessarily unfriendly question. South Africa remains a main feature of the sterling area. Her generosity in respect of gold has been quite unrivalled. She has not withdrawn her concession in regard to gold. It was negotiated by myself with Mr. Havenga, the predecessor of the present Minister of Finance, whose friendship with this country is, I think, unrivalled among any statesmen in the world. I would therefore say that the right hon. Gentleman's question is quite unjustified, and that South Africa remains a prominent member of the sterling area.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is the Chancellor aware that it is no reflection on a country to suggest that it may not be a member of the sterling area? Is he aware that Canada is not a member of the sterling area? Will he indicate in what way our trade and currency arrangements with South Africa differ from those with Canada?

Mr. Butler: The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that South Africa shares with us in the general meetings which take place of the sterling area Ministers, and that Canada also attends as a dollar member but not a sterling member of the group. As far as I am concerned, our relations with South Africa, in which we are now earning the gold that we need so much, reflect not only upon the great recovery to which Mr. Louw, the new Minister of Finance, has made reference in this country, but also to the great friendship with South Africa in our trade relations one with another.

Dollar Stocks (Sale)

Mr. Gaitskell: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what dollar stocks, at present owned by Her Majesty's Government, it is proposed to sell; the terms of sale; and what income was received in respect of them during 1954.

Mr. R. A. Butler: With permission I will circulate in the Official Report the list of dollar stocks which have been offered for sale. They are being offered at London market prices. As regards the third part of the Question, the right hon. Member will appreciate that it is not usual to disclose such particulars in respect of assets held by the Exchange Equalisation Account, but he can, of course, be assured that the dollar income will continue to accrue to this country.

Mr. Gaitskell: Will the Chancellor say why he decided to sell these securities?

Mr. Butler: I have said in answer to a previous Parliamentary Question that the larger part of these assets will be kept under the control of Her Majesty's Treasury. That was on 3rd February this year. During the right hon. Gentleman's term of office certain sales were effected; that is to say, in 1951, in a reply which the right hon. Gentleman gave, on 3rd July, he indicated that certain sales were being effected. I have found it convenient to permit these sales, and as the dollar results will accrue to the benefit of this country, I think that the right hon. Gentleman may regard it as an entirely satisfactory transaction.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the ground on which I decided that certain sales should be made was that there were very strong arguments

on the ground of management? What I was asking, and I ask again, was whether the same conditions apply to the dollar securities which he is now selling.

Mr. Butler: I am aware of the conditions which the right hon. Gentleman attached to his sales, because I have particulars of them with me—for greater caution. Exactly the same considerations do not apply to these sales, but it has been thought convenient that these sales should take place, leaving the majority of these securities in the control of the Treasury.

Mr. Gaitskell: Will the right hon. Gentleman give the House some explanation of this? For what reason has he decided to sell the securities, and is the income which the Government lose as a result of that balanced by any increase in sterling income?

Mr. Butler: The dollar income will accrue to the country, and it is of course possible in the circumstances that those who sell these securities give an equivalent amount of their foreign capital available for similar sales to take place eleswhere. There is nothing very remarkable in 15 million dollars' worth of these sales taking place.

Mr. Gaitskell: Will the Chancellor please try to give us on some future occasion a statement which is slightly less obscure than the one which he has just made?

Following is the list:

BONDS

American and Foreign Power Company Inc. 5 per cent. Gold Debentures 2030.

Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company 4 per cent. General Mortgage Gold Bonds 1995.

Missouri Pacific Railroad Company 5 per cent. First Mortgage and Refunding Gold Bonds Series "F" 1977.

Pennsylvania Railroad Company 4½ per cent. Consolidated Mortgage Gold Bonds 1960.

Southern Railway Company 6½ per cent. Development and General Mortgage Gold Bonds Series "A" 1956.

SHARES

American Bakeries Company Common Stock.

American Cyanamid Company Common Stock.

American Natural Gas Company Common Stock.

American News Company Capital Stock.

American Power and Light Company Common Stock.

American Smelting and Refining Company Common Stock.

American Tobacco Company 6 per cent. Cumulative Preferred Stock.

American Tobacco Company Common Stock.

Anaconda Copper Mining Company Common Stock.

Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company Common Stock.

Atlantic Refining Company Common Stock.

Blaw-Knox Company Capital Stock.

Chase National Bank of the City of New York Capital Stock.

Chrysler Corporation Common Stock.

Clevite Corporation Common Stock.

Coca-Cola Company Common Stock.

Columbia Gas System Inc. Common Stock.

Congoleum-Nairn Inc. Common Stock.

Crucible Steel Company of America 5 per cent. Cumulative Convertible Preferred Stock.

Electric Storage Battery Company Common Stock.

Gimbel Brothers Inc. $4·50 Cumulative Preferred Stock.

International Harvester Company Common Stock.

Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company Common Stock.

Lorillard (P) Company Common Stock.

Macy (R.H.) and Company Inc. Common Stock.

Marlin-Rockwell Corporation Common Stock.

Mead Johnson and Company Common Stock.

Ohio Oil Company Common Stock.

Pennsylvania Power and Light Company Common Stock.

Portland Gas and Coke Company Common Stock.

Procter and Gamble Company Common Stock.

Servel Inc. Common Stock.

South Jersey Gas Company Common Stock.

Southern Company Common Stock.

Starrett (L.S.) Company Common Stock.

Texas Gulf Sulphur Company Capital Stock.

Union Bag and Paper Corporation Capital Stock.

Union Electric Company of Missouri Common Stock.

Vick Chemical Company Capital Stock.

Westinghouse Air Brake Company Capital Stock.

Worthington Corporation Common Stock.

Wrigley (Wm.) Jr. Company Capital Stock.

Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company Common Stock.

National Land Fund

Mr. Owen: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if, having now examined the Third Report of the Public Accounts Committee, he will make a statement concerning the balance and use of the National Land Fund.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I regret that I am still not in a position to make a statement on these matters.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Will the Chancellor take into account the suggestion that some of this Fund might well be used, as originally intended, for the National Parks Commission?

Mr. Butler: This is a time of year when I consider all sorts of attractive ideas.

Mr. K. Robinson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that, if he is not able to tell us anything before the Budget, a statement on the future of the Fund will be incorporated in his Budget statement?

Mr. Butler: I can give no undertaking whatever about my Budget statement. This is a matter which is obviously under consideration at this time of year.

Estate Duty (Voluntary Gifts)

Mr. E. Fletcher: asked the Chan cellor of the Exchequer in what circum stances voluntary gifts, such as birthday presents, form part of a person's estate for Estate Duty purposes.

Mr. R. A. Butler: Under the general rule a voluntary gift made to an individual within five years of the donor's death attracts Estate Duty in connection with that death. Gifts in consideration of marriage, gifts which formed part of the normal expenditure of the deceased and are reasonable, and absolute gifts which in the case of any one donee do not exceed £500, are excluded from the charge under this rule.

Mr. Fletcher: Will the Chancellor bear in mind that, from the correspondence which I have been receiving, it is apparent that there is considerable concern about this matter among those who have been subscribing to the Prime Minister's 80th birthday gift, and will he clarify the position?

Mr. Butler: So far as I am concerned, the situation is quite clear, but if the hon. Gentleman wishes to send me any of his correspondence, I shall be glad to look at it.

Commodity Shunting Operations

Mr. Jay: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he is taking to discourage commodity shunting operations, based on transferable sterling, which may threaten the sterling area's gold and dollar reserve.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I keep a close watch on this.

Mr. Jay: In view of the weakness in the sterling area recently, and the decline in gold reserves since last summer, does not the Chancellor consider that he is taking the matter rather lightly?

Mr. Butler: No, Sir. I am not taking it lightly at all. It is clear that there is a certain degree of this going on. That is why I said that I am keeping a close watch on it.

Mr. Gaitskell: Can the right hon. Gentleman give the House any idea of the extent of the leakage?

Mr. Butler: I do not think that it is so exaggerated as some people make out. It has results only outside the sterling area and has no relation to our direct exports to the dollar area. It is mostly concerned with European and Continental and other foreign operators, so that it is strictly limited to that area. But there is a certain degree of it going on.

Post-war Credits

Mr. Vane: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many years he estimates it will take to repay all outstanding claims for post-war credits.

Mr. R. A. Butler: If the present provisions for payment remained unaltered some post-war credit holders would not be able to claim payment of their credits for 35 years or more.

Oral Answers to Questions — LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS (EXPORT CONTROL)

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is aware of the inadequacy of present arrangements for the preservation, recording, and control of export of literary manuscripts of national importance; and if he will consider setting up a committee to inquire into the problem and make recommendations.

Mr. R. A. Butler: The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art which I appointed in December, 1952, advises, under its terms of reference, on the principles which should govern the control of the export of works of art and

antiques: this includes literary manuscripts. Under the circumstances, while not accepting the implications of the first part of the hon. Member's Question, I can only say that I will study any evidence which he puts before me.

Mr. Robinson: Is the Chancellor aware that it is not easy, even in the British Museum, to trace manuscripts which have been acquired at any time during the last 30 years, because the cataloguing stopped in 1922? Is he aware that it is almost impossible to trace manuscripts elsewhere and in private hands in this country; and, further, that the committee to which he referred is not, I understand, satisfied with the arrangement for the control of exports of literary manuscripts?

Mr. Butler: That is why I suggested that the hon. Member should put before me any evidence that he has. While I am aware of the case to which some publicity has been given, I was not aware of a general difficulty in the matter. Perhaps the hon. Member will help me.

Mr. E. Fletcher: Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer be publishing the recommendations which he has received from this reviewing committee?

Mr. Butler: I do not think that we can get much more publication than we have had in this matter, but I will examine what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Oral Answers to Questions — COTTON INDUSTRY (IMPORTS OF FOREIGN CLOTH)

Mrs. Castle: asked the Prime Minister what reply he has sent to the letter he has received from cotton employers and trade union leaders in Lancashire, drawing his attention to the plight of the industry due to the imports of foreign cloth.

The Prime Minister (Sir Winston Churchill): I received the letter to which the hon. Member refers on Saturday last. My reply is under consideration.

Mrs. Castle: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the cotton industry of Lancashire has had several "goes" at the Board of Trade on this important matter, and so far has not got anywhere?


Will he either himself receive the deputation which in that letter he is requested to receive, or send it to his right hon. Friend marked, "Action this day"?

The Prime Minister: All these matters are under consideration.

Oral Answers to Questions — ATOMIC WARFARE (INFORMATION)

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Prime Minister when he proposes to make available to the House new information in his possession on atomic warfare.

The Prime Minister: I shall be dealing with this dominating subject when I speak in the defence debate next week. At present I have nothing to add to the information contained in the White Paper published on the 17th instant.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Has the attention of the Prime Minister been drawn to the report of the United States Atomic Energy Commission which was published last week? Did the Government have the facts before them when they compiled the defence White Paper? Is the Prime Minister aware that the latest report says that the explosion of the latest H-bomb contaminated an area of 7,000 square miles and was equal to 20 million tons of T.N.T.? Were those considerations borne in mind when the White Paper was compiled?

The Prime Minister: I shall be making a statement on the subject next week, and I shall refer to these matters, among others, when I do so.

Oral Answers to Questions — AIRCRAFT (PROVISION)

Mr. Edelman: asked the Prime Minister whether he will appoint a Select Committee to inquire into the expenditure of public money for the provision of air craft, for which there has been no adequate return; and to inquire, further, into the restrictive arrangements which now exist between Government Departments and the Society of British Aircraft Constructors or designing companies, with special reference to the methods used by Government Departments in allocating and financing development and production contracts.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. Experiment does not cease to be imperative because it is not invariably successful. I see no need to add to the machinery which exists, and on which the House relies for the examination and investigation of public expenditure. As regards the second part of the Question, no such restrictive arrangements exist. The awarding of contracts to the various firms is a complicated problem which must be viewed from many angles and decided on its merits.

Mr. Edelman: Is the Prime Minister aware that the aircraft ring—the designing firms of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors—is throttling aircraft production? Is he aware that this ring has absorbed vast subsidies in the form of development contracts without giving an adequate return? Does he not consider that this situation requires special examination and remedy?

The Prime Minister: That is a very complicated question, and I think I should like to have the advantage of seeing it on the Order Paper first.

Oral Answers to Questions — ATOMIC AND HYDROGEN WEAPONS (TESTS)

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Prime Minister what consultations he has had with the Indian Prime Minister with a view to implementing the Government of India's proposal made to the United Nations that all atomic and hydrogen tests should be banned.

The Prime Minister: I do not propose to add to the communiqué issued on 8th February at the end of the Commonwealth Conference.

Mr. Henderson: Without adding to the communiqué, but in view of the fact that the Disarmament Conference is to resume its deliberations on Friday and that this question has been remitted by the Conference to the United Nations General Assembly, will not the Prime Minister take the first step in seeking to deal with this frightful menace to human welfare by at least indicating that Her Majesty's Government will support the proposal of the Government of India?

The Prime Minister: I think that I would rather refer to that in the course


of the debate than by an answer given impromptu across the Table of the House.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Before the debate takes place, will the Prime Minister consider that, in addition to the 300 people of various nationalities physically damaged as the result of the hydrogen-bomb experiment last year, a leading American scientist, Dr. Sturtevant, has estimated that 1,800 babies have been born adversely affected by radioactivity, and suffering from mental aberration or physical defect; and will Her Majesty's Government give support to the suspension of the tests while the disarmament discussions are going on?

The Prime Minister: I should certainly not associate myself in any way with such a decision at the present time, nor in the course of Questions in the House of Commons.

Mr. Strachey: Is the Prime Minister aware that the supreme advantage of this proposal is that it is, in the words of Professor Oppenheimer, self-policing, since the scientists can detect atomic or nuclear explosions anywhere in the world, and, therefore, that this is a practicable limitation and could be agreed on by the nations of the world?

The Prime Minister: I have nothing to add to what I have said. This is a very grave matter affecting the whole future of mankind. We have a view and a policy, and we intend to pursue it. It has to some extent been set forth in the White Paper and will be freely debated by the House in the prolonged debates which we shall have, and which begin next week.

Mr. Henderson: Does the reply of the right hon. Gentleman mean that, when the occasion comes next week, he will state the policy of Her Majesty's Government with regard to the proposal of the Government of India?

The Prime Minister: We have not accepted that proposal.

Mr. Henderson: May I ask the Prime Minister whether, without committing himself or the Government to having accepted anything, he is proposing to deal with the proposal of the Government of India—without necessarily accepting it?

The Prime Minister: I think that the general scope of my argument will carry this matter in its train.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONALISED BOARDS (SALARIES)

Mr. Grimond: asked the Prime Minister if, in view of paragraph 78 of the Report of the Advisory Committee on Organisation of the National Coal Board, he will review the remuneration of the heads of the nationalised industries.

The Prime Minister: The White Paper is an accurate factual summary about the supply of military——

Hon. Members: Wrong answer.

Mr. Speaker: I called Question No. 49.

The Prime Minister: I am sorry. The answer is as follows: 
The proposal of the Report of the Advisory Committee on the Organisation of the National Coal Board, that the salaries of full-time members of the Board should be substantially increased, is connected with the Committee's view that some members of the Board's staff should receive £7,500 a year, and is involved with other recommendations in the Report. It will be necessary to learn the views of the National Coal Board as now constituted on all of these recommendations before a decision can be reached. Moreover, such increases could only be decided, as the hon. Gentleman realises, in relation to a review of the remuneration in other nationalised industries.

Mr. Grimond: Does not the Prime Minister agree that while very large salaries are paid in private industry it is unfair that people who run the nationalised industries should be paid very much less for equivalent work? Will he consider either putting up their salaries or—what is perhaps better—bringing his influence to bear upon his friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to reduce the tax upon earned income?

The Prime Minister: I think that the procedure I indicated in my reply would be the most advisable one to follow.

Mr. H. Morrison: Is the Prime Minister aware that some private industries are really silly and luxurious in the artificially high salaries which they pay? Will he


consider the social and moral consequences upon industry if the salaries of chairmen of nationalised industries are put above their existing not unappreciable level?

The Prime Minister: Yes, but I think I should like to hear the views of the reconstituted Coal Board upon this subject.

Oral Answers to Questions — MILITARY AIRCRAFT SUPPLY (WHITE PAPER)

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:

Mr. Wyatt: To ask the Prime Minister whether he is aware that the White Paper on the Supply of Military Aircraft, Command Paper No. 9388, contains a number of mis-statements of fact; and whether he will instruct the Ministers of Defence and Supply to withdraw this White Paper and issue a complete and accurate survey of the subject before the White Paper on Defence is debated in this House.

Mr. Wyatt: On a point of order. Whether in error or out of an intense desire to answer my Question, the Prime Minister began to answer Question No. 50. As he has given a partial answer that must now be recorded in HANSARD, as there is no means of deleting what he said from HANSARD, would it not be in the interests of the House, if the Prime Minister is willing, if the whole answer were given?

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that that has nothing to do with me. All I am concerned with is that the time is after 3.30 p.m., and I am afraid we must proceed to the next business. I may say that the complete answer will appear as a written answer in the Official Report.

Mr. Stokes: Surely it will look very odd if this unpremeditated effort upon the part of the Prime Minister appears, incomplete, in HANSARD? It will not cost the Prime Minister any effort to regurgitate it. Cannot he get on with it?

The Prime Minister: As the error was mine, in turning over more pages than one, may I ask your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, and finish my reply?

Mr. Speaker: Very well.

The Prime Minister: The White Paper is an accurate factual summary about the supply of military aircraft since 1945. The hon. Member's allegation that it contains a number of mis-statements of fact is not accepted by Her Majesty's Government. It might well be an issue which might be raised in the pending debates on defence, and perhaps the hon. Member will find an opportunity to take part in them. One never can tell.

Mr. Wyatt: I thank the Prime Minister for his intercession on my behalf with you, Mr. Speaker, but may I ask him whether it is not inaccurate to say that we have the best night fighter defence in the world when all that is meant is that we have the best system of communications and means of being aware that enemy bombers are overhead, but that we do not have the means to shoot them down? Is not the Prime Minister aware that the "Daily Telegraph" has said that several statements in this White Paper are astonishing, and that the "Manchester Guardian" has described it as lacking in candour? Is he also aware that it has not satisfied any of the military experts?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member seems to be anticipating the debate.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Dugdale: On a point of order. I put down a Question to the Prime Minister with reference to an agreement that is being made by Her Majesty's Government to transfer certain territories from the British Commonwealth to a foreign Power. The Prime Minister has transferred that Question to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. I fully realise that he is obviously entitled to do so, but my point is that, he having done so, it is exceedingly unlikely that Questions addressed to the Secretary of State for the Colonies will be reached before next Monday—and next Monday is the operative date upon which these territories are to be transferred.
In view of the Prime Minister's statement that he himself has a personal interest in seeing that the British Empire is not liquidated, will you, Mr. Speaker, allow the Prime Minister to answer this Question, or allow the Secretary of State for the Colonies to answer it, so that the


people concerned may have the right to be heard before this agreement is carried into force?

The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend has informed me that he will be making a statement upon this subject and arranging to answer Questions upon it tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker: That seems to settle that particular difficulty.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings on the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Bill, of the Committee on Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage [Money] and on the National Service Bill exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[The Prime Minister.]

Orders of the Day — CHILDREN AND YOUNG PERSONS (HARMFUL PUBLICATIONS) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

3.37 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Major Gwilym Lloyd-George): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is a short and comparatively simple Bill dealing with a specific object, which is succinctly described in the Long Title. Many hon. Members will have seen the exhibition of so-called horror comics which was organised by the National Union of Teachers and was shown in the Palace of Westminster a short time ago. I think that all hon. Members who saw that exhibition will agree that by organising it the National Union of Teachers has performed a valuable public service. I think that it is also true to say that, as a result of the publicity given to these publications in the autumn of last year, their publication in this country has, for the time being, been severely curtailed. The Government—and, I feel sure, every hon. Member—take the view that it is an important part of the responsibilities of parents and teachers to supervise the reading of their children, and it is a source of satisfaction that such effective results have been produced by the emphatic expression of public opinion.
It is, however, a very difficult matter, both for parents and teachers, to ensure that children do not get hold of objectionable publications without their knowledge, and the Government believe that it is necessary to ask the House to pass the Bill in order to support the action taken by parents and teachers, by empowering the courts to prevent the continued circulation of such copies as may still be on the market, and the resumption of their publication.
Careful consideration has been given to the question whether the distribution of these publications could be prevented by proceedings under the law relating to obscene publications. It appears, however, that, as a result of judicial decisions, the word "obscene" has come to be regarded as being restricted to matter


relating to sex, and that it is unlikely, therefore, that publications which deal with horror and violence could be the subject of successful prosecutions under the existing law.
It was, therefore, necessary to consider whether legislation should be introduced to empower the courts to deal with them, a course which was very strongly urged on the Government—in particular by a deputation which I received last year from the Church of England Council for Education, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Mr. A. J. Irvine: Can the right hon. and gallant Gentleman say, for the information of the House, whether or not any indictment for obscene libel has, in fact, been laid against the perpetrators of these works?

Major Lloyd-George: Not that I am aware of, for the reason that I have just given.
The deputation to which I have referred drew attention to the fact that legislation to deal with this problem has been introduced in a number of Commonwealth countries, and the provisions of those enactments have been very carefully examined since then. Many of them, however, involve methods of control, such as the registration of booksellers or the establishment of a censorship board, which the Government do not consider necessary or, indeed, desirable, to deal with the problem as it exists in this country.
As I explained in the Answer which I gave to the hon. Member for Shore-ditch and Finsbury (Mr. Collins) last December, the Government were anxious that legislation should be carefully retricted to the type of publication which has rightly aroused so much concern in this country, and that is the object of the present Bill. The Bill does not seek in any way to amend the law relating to obscene publications, for that is a much more complicated and controversial question, which is under examination at the present time.
The Bill applies, with necessary adaptations, to Scotland. If hon. Members have any particular points with reference to Scotland, my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate will deal with them when he replies to the debate.
To turn to the provisions of the Bill itself, Clause 1 defines the publications to which the Bill applies in very narrow terms. In the first place, the publication must be a book, magazine or other like work—which excludes newspapers—which consists wholly or mainly—there are very important words—of stories told in pictures. The Bill would not, therefore, apply to a book consisting mainly of reading matter illustrated by pictures, but only to the pictorial type of publication of which the so-called horror comic is an example.
Second, the stories must be stories portraying the commission of crimes or acts of violence or cruelty, or incidents of a horrible or repulsive nature.
Lastly, the stories must be so portrayed that the work as a whole would tend to corrupt a child or young person into whose hands it might fall. Those hon. Members who took the advantage of seeing the exhibition on view in this House some time ago, and who have seen copies of the so-called horror comic, will, I think, agree that there is not much difficulty about this definition applying to them. Indeed, if any hon. Gentleman or anybody else had difficulty in applying it, the publishers themselves would help them.
In the course of my studies of one of these delightful books the other day, I saw an advertisement on the back, which is the publishers' or the newsagents' advertisement—I am not sure which—and it said this:
Imagine—you are selling a nice line in Comfy Kiddies Komics and Dainty Dailies when a parcel of putrid patter slithers slimily in at the back door; you hold your nose and cut the string, and your reeking ration of horror has arrived.
That is a description of the publication by the people who are publishing it. They go further and say that if anyone who has not got a copy writes to the publishers, they will be very happy to supply one. Some of the wording is very funny, but I think this is a very serious thing. I have read it out simply to show that if we had any difficulty about deciding what it was, these gentlemen, the publishers, had none at all.
In the Government's view, we do not think that there is any serious danger that other publications, such as the well-known children's comic papers which have been published in this country for


many years now, would be regarded as falling within this definition. If, however, there is any doubt on this point whatever, the Government will be ready to consider any Amendments which may be put forward in Committee with the object of ensuring that the scope of the Bill is no wider than is necessary to deal with the mischief at which it is aimed.
The matter can, I think, more usefully be discussed in Committee, but I should like to refer briefly to some of the criticisms of this Clause which have appeared in the Press in the last few days, and, in particular, in a letter from Sir Alan Herbert which was published in "The Times" yesterday. The Clause is objected to on two main grounds: the first that it disregards the intention of the accused person, and the second that it contains no provision for considering literary or artistic merit or the admission on these points of expert evidence.
The question of intention is very difficult. It is difficult for me as a layman, and I think it is difficult for lawyers, too. If the word "intention" is used in the sense in which we use it in everyday language, it would not, I suggest, be practicable to enforce a Bill in which the intention of the accused was the central issue. He has only to say, with sufficient conviction, that it was not his intention to corrupt children and young persons, and the case falls to the ground.
If, on the other hand, the word is used in the sense that a man must be presumed to intend the reasonable results of his actions, the test becomes an objective one, and the question for decision is whether a particular publication would, in fact, tend to corrupt, which is the principle on which the Clause is based. There is, no doubt, room for argument about the precise words, but I think that the House should recognise that if the Bill is to be enforceable, the test must be an objective one which is capable of decision by a court.
The question of literary or artistic merit also raises difficult issues. Literary merit is really irrelevant in the context of the Bill which, I would remind the House, is restricted to pictorial publications. If the court is to be required to pay regard to artistic merit it will be necessary to define its relevance very carefully. For example, the mere fact that the pictures

in a horror comic are skilfully drawn—and some of them are far too skilfully drawn——

Mr. M. Follick: Why is the Bill limited to pictorial publications? Other publications can be far more injurious than pictorial ones.

Major Lloyd-George: I do not think I can agree with the hon. Gentleman on that point. In many of the stories we have read there were scenes of horror, but we had to read the book to get to them. That is the great difference.
Another difference is that the horrors were not concentrated as they are in these pictorial publications, in which there is nothing but a series of horror pictures. That was not so in the books we read as children. These were very exciting and full of bloodthirsty events, but they were literature. That is why we have restricted the Bill to pictorial publications. The mere fact that the pictures are skilfully drawn should not be a defence against proceedings under the Bill.
Everyone will be anxious to ensure that the Bill does not become what Sir Alan Herbert describes in his letter as
a new threat to the liberty of publishers, printers, librarians and booksellers.
The Government's view is that the scope of the Bill is so limited that no such danger exists, and that the sort of safeguard which has been proposed for the protection of serious literature for adults is hardly appropriate to pictorial publications which have a special attraction and special dangers for children. Most people will agree that there is a peculiar responsibility to ensure that young people who read this sort of publication are protected from possible harmful influences. If, in discharging this responsibility, we have to accept some limitation on the freedom of adults to read this sort of publication, I do not think we shall be paying a very high price.
Clause 2 provides that the maximum penalty for an offence under the Bill shall be four months' imprisonment or a fine of £100, or both. The fact that the maximum term of imprisonment exceeds three months will automatically give to the accused person a right to elect for trial by jury.
The purpose of Clause 3 is to prevent the distribution of harmful publications


pending legal proceedings and to enable the courts to dispose of publications in respect of which an offence has been committed. There are important differences between the procedure provided in the Bill and the present procedure for dealing with obscene publications under the Obscene Publications Act, 1857. The Bill provides that no search warrant may be granted unless criminal proceedings have already been instituted, and that no copies of a publication may be destroyed unless there has been a conviction in respect of that particular publication. Under the Obscene Publications Act a search warrant may be granted without the institution of proceedings for any criminal offence, and publications may be destroyed without any conviction.
Clause 4 prohibits the importation of harmful publications or plates for printing them. One of the sources of these publications is their importation in the form of matrices. All the provisions of the Customs Act, 1952, with respect to the seizure of prohibited articles will be applicable. These include the requirement that the articles seized must be brought before a court if the party aggrieved disputes the seizure.
There will no doubt be a number of detailed points which should be carefully examined in Committee, but I hope that the House will accept that it is desirable that power should be given to the courts to deal with publications of this sort. Everyone agrees, I think without exception, that these publications are totally unsuitable for reading by children and young persons.
In a leading article in "The Times" today the question is raised whether there is any need for legislation on this matter, as the responsibility is surely that of the parents. We are agreed that that is where the prime responsibility lies, but there are occasions when parents can do nothing, such as when children are at school. Teachers cannot control every publication that every child sees, although they are doing great work in that respect. In any case, the Bill is entirely consistent with a long-established principle that it is the responsibility of Parliament to make special provision for the protection of children and young persons when it is thought necessary to do so.
To give only a few examples: laws are already in existence for that very purpose in regard to cigarettes and tobacco,

intoxicating liquor, firearms, betting and juvenile employment, and we pay particular regard to attendance at a cinema to see that the children come to no harm. There are plenty of precedents for saying that, in addition to the responsibility of the parent, Parliament must do what it can to protect young children. I have gone into this matter with a great deal of care for many weeks and I am convinced that there is definitely a need in this case. I hope that the House will be willing to give the Bill a Second Reading.

3.57 p.m.

Sir Frank Soskice: The Home Secretary has outlined to us very clearly the purposes of the Bill and the reasons which have actuated the Government in introducing it, and we on this side of the House support the Measure. We agree with the Home Secretary that a case has been made out and that the circumstances are such as imperatively to require intervention by the Government for the purpose, as he says, of protecting children and young people. The Bill is designed solely for their protection. The Government have sought to ring round the evil at which the Bill is aimed and in that purpose we support the Government.
One of the most difficult tasks with which the House ever finds itself confronted is that of imposing legislation to limit freedom of expression, such as freedom of thought, freedom of artistic expression, and any freedom in print or in speech to reproduce the ideas of a speaker or writer. Difficult as that task is, the House must courageously approach it when special circumstances exist.
Everybody, I am sure, would agree in that context with what was said on behalf of the National Union of Teachers in a statement which it issued on this subject in November last year. This passage occurs in that statement:
The executive … could not rid itself of grave doubt as to whether legislation can be introduced without the danger of involving the country in a narrow and dangerous censorship threatening vital freedom of thought and expression.
Obviously, that is a most weighty consideration. In our approach to any Bill of this sort we should all have it constantly and prominently in mind.
Equally, as the Home Secretary has said, we should weigh carefully the rôle which, in matters of this sort, should be


played by parents and teachers. We lose a great deal in our national life—and I feel sure that the House will agree with me about this—when we unduly—and I emphasise the word "unduly"—lift from the shoulders of parents and teachers the responsibility which should rest upon those shoulders.
One has to bear in mind, of course, that particularly little boys—and in this I speak with personal experience as a father—have a penchant at least to simulate acts of violence. We should not perhaps be unduly disturbed by seeing our sons fully equipped in wild west equipment, with pistols in their holsters. I, personally, was a great devotee of "Buffalo Bill," but he has long since been disenthroned, and the present occupant of the throne in the imagination of little boys is, I believe, known as "Dan Dare."
Perhaps it is a good thing, although some parents would not agree with me in this, that little boys should work that sort of thing out of their systems, and, in any case, the inclination towards the methods of the wild west has now, I think we would all agree, been to a large extent supplanted by interest in space suits and space ships, although parents are somewhat perturbed, I think, to see the interest that their children have now developed in death ray weapons. But these are symptoms of the times, and we probably should not be unduly disturbed about them, although, as I have said, a number of parents think that it is not good for their children constantly to be seen brandishing mock weapons, lethal weapons, as they are.
Be that as it may, in this context we are not dealing with anything of that sort. We are dealing, as the Home Secretary said, with something utterly different. He cited a very relevant context from one of the "blurbs" in one of these publications, and, of course, they are legion in number. I have before me another:
The Vault of Horror.
Three lots of the most gruesome horror stories you have ever broken into a clammy sweat over! They are brilliant—but definitely not for the squeamish and should be kept away from the kiddies.
That perhaps is a piece of gross hypocrisy and dishonesty on the part of those who publish them.
If you belong to neither of these groups you'll lose your head over these terror tomes.

This publication consists of ghoulish representations in picture form of cruelty, terror, abnormality, insanity, torture and death; pictures of women in evening dress, brandishing whips; every appeal to the instincts of sadism, and every excitation of one's most brutish inclinations, tastes and feelings.
Death and pain, agony of mind and body, are represented in a variety of forms. I should have thought, and I believe that all hon. Members will agree with me, that it was really beyond controversy that to read that kind of stuff, however balanced or sane a child or young person may be, cannot do him any good. In happy home surroundings, no doubt, the influence of parents, brothers and sisters, and friends should assist the younger reader of that kind of stuff to repel any baleful influence which may pervade as a result of reading it. But one has to consider that this sort of stuff will be read not only by children who come from happy homes.
It will be read, as the Home Secretary said, when there are no parents present. It will be read secretly and passed clandestinely from hand to hand. It will be read by children who may be emotionally unbalanced, perhaps through unhappy home surroundings, when parents have parted, or are on bad terms. It will be read by children who have perhaps had the misfortune of arrested or stunted mental development, by children or young boys or girls who are already accustomed to bad company, and so on—children who have some kind of mental twist or abnormality; and it does not require much effort to divine the kind of effect that these publications may have on these children and young persons.
There is the case—and the Home Secretary has already deployed it—for some intervention by the Government in this matter. Of course, the House is well accustomed to legislation, extending back centuries into our history in one form or another, to inhibit complete and unrestrained freedom of expression. The Home Secretary has referred to the law of obscenity. When one is dealing with matters of obscenity, one is confronted with the difficulty of balancing, on the one side, the need for freedom of artistic expression, the need to preserve for society that which has something of literary value or beauty in however small a degree, and,


on the other, balancing against that the need to protect society from what is merely pornographic, without more in it.
That kind of problem does not really confront the House in the case of these publications. They have no redeeming feature. They are correctly described as being simply repulsive publications, without more to them. So these balancing considerations, which are perplexing to Parliament and the courts when one is dealing with obscenity, are really not present in this particular problem. But our legislation and our law, expanded by precedent, has, of course, to cover a much wider range than that. We have, after all the extremely necessary law to deal with contempt of court, for example, restraining persons from scurrilous criticism or attacks upon the judiciary, or even non-scurrilous publication of matter which may have the effect of prejudicing a fair trial of criminal proceedings.
We have laws to deal with blasphemy, and I think that the Attorney-General will agree with me that one of the most difficult and anxious aspects of our law is that which pertains to seditious libel. He must have been concerned with that kind of problem not infrequently in the course of his office, and that is again another sphere in which the law steps in and says that, in certain circumstances, expression must be inhibited and certain kinds of self-expression are to be forbidden altogether.
So there is nothing new or revolutionary in introducing legislation of this kind. Furthermore, our legislature, as the Home Secretary pointed out, has been particularly solicitous in providing safeguards for the young, who cannot be expected to be able, in some respects, to take care for their own moral, spiritual and physical safety, as older people can. I would therefore suggest, as the Home Secretary has already suggested, that there can be no basic objection in principle by this House to a Measure on these lines.
The real question that arises is whether the Government have, in the definition which they have chosen, and the form in which they have cast their Measure, proceeded on the right lines. May I say at once, speaking for myself, that I recognise that the definition is certainly an ingenious one, if I may be permitted to say so, in that it is very strictly narrowed in its purview and contains a number of

qualifications which must be complied with before the publication can come within the ambit of the Bill?
As the Home Secretary has pointed out, the definition requires, in the first place, that the publication must be either a book, or a magazine or something of that kind.
… which consists wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures …
Those words, of course, very greatly narrow the scope of the Bill. They would seem to be appropriate to bring within the scope of the Bill precisely the type of publication to which the Home Secretary has referred and which one can obtain in ample measure if one is so inclined.
That is the first thing that must be shown, but, of course, within that definition one at once finds oneself confronted with some degree of uncertainty. The publications must be either wholly stories told in pictures or they must be mainly stories told in pictures. One at once asks oneself whether a contemporary magazine with excellent photographs, for example, of refugees in the Korean war under bombing, or having suffered the results of bombing, could not be said to tell a story wholly or mainly in pictures—certainly not wholly, but whether it could not be said to tell a story mainly in pictures.
If one opens the pages, for example, of a publication such as "Picture Post" one will find that, physically at any rate, a great deal of the space on a number of the pages is taken up with photographs—excellent photographs, and photographs which ought to be seen and ought to be studied by the adult population of this country. I agree with the Home Secretary that this is the sort of question which we must examine much more closely in Committee. Therefore, at this stage, I would simply pose the question whether in using the word "mainly" in that particular context the Government have not unwittingly included publications such as that to which I have referred, containing photographs, for example, of the result of war and bombing.
It may be said that the qualification that the publication must be such as
… to corrupt a child or young person …
would be sufficient to exclude the sort of publication to which I have referred——

Mr. Sydney Silverman: In whose opinion?

Sir F. Soskice: —and my hon. Friend says "In whose opinion?"
The definition or qualification is embodied in these words: the publication has to portray the commission of crimes, acts of violence or incidents of a repulsive nature
… in such a way that the work as a whole would tend to corrupt a child or young person into whose hands it might fall (whether by inciting or encouraging him to commit crimes or acts of violence or cruelty or in any other way whatsoever).
That is a test which will have to be applied by benches of magistrates all over the country before which many cases of this sort may be heard, because the prosecutions will, in the first place, be on summary conviction although, as the Home Secretary has pointed out, the accused will have the right to claim trial by jury.
One criticism that I make is that, perhaps unavoidably, one may get a great lack of uniformity about this. One bench may say that a picture of persons being harrowed by bombing or sniping would "in any way whatsoever" tend to corrupt children if it got into their hands. Most benches would probably say that it would not, but, nevertheless, there is bound to be a great difference of approach by the various benches who may have to deal with this type of publication—if, indeed, it continues.
I therefore simply pose the question, for consideration in this debate and in Committee hereafter, whether it would not be better to introduce a requirement that prosecutions should be undertaken only with the consent of the Attorney-General or the Director of Public Prosecutions or that a similar test should be introduced. Clause 2 of the Bill makes any person liable to prosecution who has publications of this sort on sale. It is rather hard on the bookseller or the person who has a stall on which newspapers or magazines are sold if there is not at any rate the maximum certainty that can be achieved by drafting as to the ambit of the offence.
I put it to the Government that if the test is that the publication tells a story wholly or mainly in pictures and that it portrays the commission of crimes, and so on, and that, thereafter, the only test

as to whether an offence is committed by selling the publication is whether a bench in any part of the country might think that "in any way whatsoever" it might tend to corrupt the mind of the child or young person into whose hands it may fall, that test is very fallible, and the bookseller who may sell magazines or similar publications is left in a state of very considerable uncertainty which, as far as possible, should be removed.
The question is as to how, if at all, that uncertainty can be removed. Possibly, it cannot be removed, but I would suggest to the Government that a considerably greater degree of certainty could be introduced if the intent of the seller, or the publisher, or the circulator—in whatever form he circulates it—were made the relevant test: in other words, if, in order that a conviction might be obtained, it were necessary to establish affirmatively that the purpose of the seller was to sell it to young persons. The Home Secretary has said that that would be an impracticable test. It would be hardly feasible to discuss that on Second Reading, but in Committee I shall again seek to raise it.
In answer to the Home Secretary, I would suggest that by looking at the nature of the make-up of the publication in question it should not be difficult to prove to what kind of public it was being addressed. I should have thought that by looking at any of these particular magazines one could tell that they were designed to be read by young persons. If it were necessary to prove affirmatively that the intention of the publisher was to cater for young people I should have thought one would have had a very desirable additional safeguard for those who sell these magazines.

Mr. John Rankin: I appreciate my right hon. and learned Friend's purpose in seeking to introduce motive into Clause 2, but would he not agree that the manner in which he has suggested it should be introduced would, in fact, kill the Bill?

Sir F. Soskice: That is the view which the Home Secretary has put forward. I certainly would not for a moment say that he is necessarily wrong in that view. I think, however, that it is a view which the Home Secretary himself indicated he would desire to see further discussed in Committee. I simply put the contrary


view for precisely the same purpose. I should think that a question such as that asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) is one which should be pursued further in Committee. I am pointing out some of the things that I consider, rightly or wrongly, to be defects in the Bill and suggesting ways of dealing with them, but I think that the whole House would welcome further comments.

Captain J. A. L. Duncan: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman re-read the school-boys' letters which were collected by the National Union of Teachers, from which it is quite clear that it was not the school-children who bought the publications but father or uncle?

Sir F. Soskice: That may be so. That simply prompts me to say—and I am quite sure that the Home Secretary will agree with me about this—that it would be a great pity if, inadvertently or intentionally, we prevented adult people from reading horror publications.
My reason for saying that is the following: we all appear to be too apt to forget what went on, for example, in Buchenwald, and I think it is a very salutary thing that grown-ups—not children—should be reminded from time to time of what can happen upon this earth among so-called civilised people. I am entirely at one with the Home Secretary in seeking to limit the Bill solely to publications designed for children and young persons.
In expressing the hope that the House will give a Second Reading to the Bill, I have sought to indicate one or two suggestions which perhaps the Home Secretary may think it wise to take into account. I simply add this one further suggestion: this being a Bill which, after all, however one tries to describe it, to some extent inhibits freedom of discussion, I suggest to the Home Secretary that it is the sort of Bill which would be better discussed in Committee on the Floor of the House than in Committee upstairs. He may agree with me about that or he may not, but my reason is the nature of the Bill which, as I have said, is a Bill which controls what is a form of expression, however mean and contemptible a form.
With those observations, I personally support the Bill and hope that the House will give it a Second Reading.

4.22 p.m.

Mr. John Foster: It seems that this legislation is in accord with the general sense of the people of this country and that the people also think, as the Home Secretary said, that great care should be exercised in framing the scope of the Bill.
My right hon. and gallant Friend drew attention to the many aspects in which the law is particularly directed towards prohibiting children from doing or seeing things or having certain articles. The difference in this case—and that is the reason for extra caution—is that the definition in the Bill, perhaps necessarily, will hit in its scope all the people and is not limited to children, because, as has been pointed out, we cannot exactly pick out which publication will be read by children and which will not. I therefore ask the Home Secretary to look with great care at the definition and at the question of the omission of any intent.
I have a suggestion to make in a few minutes which may be a compromise between the views of people who think that intent should be put into the Bill positively and those of people who think that it should be left out altogether. I ask my right hon. and gallant Friend to see whether the scope of the definition will not be a little too wide. It reads:
(b) acts of violence or cruelty; or (c) incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature;".
Such things, for instance, are often portrayed in world-famous pictures, and it might well be that an art gallery reproduction of the scenes of Hogarth, which may be telling a story of "a repulsive or horrible nature," would be caught by this definition. It might also be possible that an account of the doings in the concentration camps, published with the very laudable motive mentioned by the right hon. and learned Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice), would also be caught by this definition.

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: The hon. and learned Gentleman is a lawyer. Would he explain something which rather puzzles me, as a layman, in what he has just said? The illustrations of Hogarth has been quoted in the Press. But the Bill reads:
any book, magazine or other like work …
Can he explain how an exhibition in an art gallery comes in that?

Mr. Foster: I was not talking about an exhibition but about an illustrated catalogue or little brochure which reproduced scenes from Hogarth, with very little reading matter, and which might well be "stories told in pictures" of incidents which were of a "repulsive or horrible nature." I can well imagine that, to prevent road accidents, pictures of injuries to people and of road accidents might be portrayed in a little booklet, the story being that one must be more careful on the roads; and that would be caught by the definition, because if it fell into the hands of a child it might well, in the opinion of the bench, be held to have a tendency to corrupt him.
I therefore suggest that in Committee we might consider it possible to insert a defence of intention. In other words, the difficulty which I see in putting in intention as a positive act to be proved by the prosecution is that it is difficult to prove intent and also that the nature of the evidence is very difficult to establish. I imagine that that is probably why the hon. Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) intervened and that he had that point in mind.
But supposing a bench held that prima facie it was in their opinion a work which would tend to corrupt a child; that it might be one of the classes of publication which otherwise would be quite innocent but, if it happened to fall in the hands of a small child, would have that tendency; then it would be open to the defence to prove that there was no such intention. In that event, I think we might avoid the difficulty of the definition catching a much wider series of publications than the Government intend.
I also want to ask my right hon. and gallant Friend whether he thinks that the word "publishes" in Clause 2 is confined, as I think it probably is, to what I call publishers in the layman's sense, namely, somebody who publishes a book, like a publishing firm, and not publishes in the technical sense, such as in the case of libel. If that is so, as I think it probably is, may I ask whether the person who draws or composes these pictures is caught by the Bill at all? It seems to me anomalous that the person who thought out these horrors should escape, and I think he can be caught—I speak subject to correction by my right hon. and gallant Friend—only if we interpret

the word "publishes" in its narrow, libel sense of showing or publishing the pictures to somebody else.
Another question which I want to ask him is whether he does not think it undesirable that any private person should be able to lay information, because I see that under Clause 3 it is possible for a private person to start the whole machinery of this law going against a particular publication. The right hon. and learned Member for Neepsend had it in mind that it was undesirable that the police should start the machinery in various districts, and that is why he suggested, for consideration in Committee, that perhaps the consent of the Attorney-General or the Home Secretary would be necessary. But I think the possible evil is greater than that, because it seems to me that any private person can cause an immense amount of trouble by picking on particular publications and alleging that they contravene the provisions of the Bill.
My next question is whether the importation into the Bill, by implication of reference under Clause 4, of the provisions of the Customs Act, 1952, meets the case. Again, I am not sure whether somebody who imports a work of this kind is open to punishment under the Bill. If he is open to punishment under a Section of the Customs Act, I should have thought that that was inadequate and that the Bill ought to provide that anybody who imports a work of this sort should be caught by Clause 2.
It is also undesirable that when these works are imported the machinery of prosecution should be started by the Customs and that, in a sense, the person who imports them should have the onus of having to object to the seizure. I would have thought that it would have been better, if works of this kind were imported, that the State should have the duty of prosecuting the people who import them, and that then the machinery would be started by the State against the importer. At the moment it may well be that in the judgment of the Customs certain works infringe this Act, but they may well be wrong, and yet the importer has to go before the court and object to the seizure. Does not my right hon. and gallant Friend think it would be more desirable that, whether the works are for sale and are composed or appear in this country, they should be prosecuted under


the Bill and that the same should apply to the importer?

Mr. James McInnes: The hon. and learned Gentleman has referred to the importation of these publications, but surely it is not so much the importation of the publication as of the plate or film. Would he seek seizure of the plate or film?

Mr. Foster: Yes, but I would like the Bill to say that if the plates were seized the person importing them should be prosecuted. Most of the prosecutions have occurred under the procedure by which the Customs judge whether the plates infringe an Act of Parliament. They then seize them, and then the onus is on the person who imports them to object to the seizure. I would like the onus to be squarely on the State. If the plates are seized, there must be prosecution. If there is no prosecution, the plates should not be seized. This is a criticism which is a little wider in scope than this Bill, but I see an opportunity here of getting in the right principle.
In my opinion, the Home Secretary has produced a Bill which is well calculated to prevent what most of us want to see prevented, but I hope that, in accordance with the promise he gave, he will look carefully at this point again to ensure that it will not be possible for private individuals to cause a lot of harm, very often in all sincerity but starting from a different premise from that of the ordinary person, and so that certain publications in the hands of grown-ups, intended only for grown-ups and unlikely to fall into the hands of children, shall not be caught by the definitions in Clause 1 of the Bill.

4.34 p.m.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: I cannot share even the modified enthusiasm for this Bill which was expressed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sheffield, Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice). I think it is a thoroughly bad Bill and will do more harm than good. I am not opposed in principle to attempting to deal by legislation with the problem of horror comics, although it is possible that the extent and importance of that problem is exaggerated, but I am sure that, if it is to be done by a Bill, that Bill needs a good deal more consideration than has

been given to this one and, indeed, needs a radically different method of approach.
First, I think it is a great pity that when a Bill of this kind has been introduced, the opportunity has not been taken to deal with the much wider problem of the law relating to obscenity in literature generally. That is a problem about which there has been much concern recently, and I am sure it will not have escaped the notice of the Home Secretary that in commenting on this Bill "The Times," the "Sunday Times" and the "Economist"—all of them responsible organs of opinion—have made this point and have said that it would have been much better to approach the whole problem and to try to deal with it en bloc. I am sorry that this opportunity has not been taken.
I do not think it can seriously be doubted that there is need at the present time to deal with the wider problem of obscenity. There have been five cases in the past year in which publishers of the highest repute have been prosecuted. Those cases have had different results. Two of them have led to convictions, two of them have led to the acquittal of the publishers, and in one of them the jury twice disagreed.
What comes out quite clearly in all these cases is that there is a great deal of doubt and confusion about where the law stands on this issue. It would be difficult for any hon. Member of this House to read the summing-up given in those different cases and to believe that the same law was being applied by, for instance, Mr. Justice Stable and by the Recorder of London. Also, it would be difficult to say with confidence that a publisher indicted in this way would stand an equal chance whoever he happened to come before.
In the last case—the Heinemann case, "The Image and the Search"—where the jury twice disagreed, the result of that case clearly turned on the narrowest margin, and it is not an exaggeration to say that if the case had gone the other way we would have been in an extremely grave position so far as serious literature is concerned, because printers who are also indicted under the terms of these charges would have been getting so worried themselves that they would have begun to apply a printing censorship to what books they would print and what books they would not print. This would


have been an extremely serious state of affairs.
Therefore, I do not think there could be dispute that there is a wider problem here which ought to be dealt with. Could it have been dealt with at the same time as the horror comics with which we are primarily concerned in this Bill? I think it could. As the Home Secretary certainly knows—because he has been kind enough to receive a copy and to study it, and as some other hon. Members of the House may know—a committee set up under the auspices of the Society of Authors, and presided over first by Sir Alan Herbert and then by Sir Gerald Barry, on which I had the honour to serve, prepared a draft Bill for dealing with the entire problem and sought to bring the question of horror comics within the scope of the wider question.
Clause 4 of that Bill said—it does not seem to me to be in any way unduly straining the normal meaning of language—
For the purposes of this Act the words 'obscene' and 'corrupt' shall be deemed to include any matter which, whether or not related to any sexual context, unduly exploits horror, cruelty or violence, whether pictorially or otherwise.
That would have been a sensible approach to the matter but that Bill, in dealing with all this aspect of the law, sought to do many other things and sought to relate the offences to the intention of the accused person, so that part of Clause 1 would have read:
Provided that no person shall be convicted of an offence under this Section unless it is established by the prosecution either (a) that the accused intended to corrupt the persons to or among whom the said matter was intended or was likely to be so distributed, circulated, sold or offered for sale; or (b) that in so distributing, circulating, selling or offering for sale he was reckless as to whether the said matter would or would not have a corrupting effect upon such persons.
I recognise that there is a difficulty about introducing this concept into the field of law. I am not a lawyer and I move with extreme doubt and caution in this very difficult matter, but I thought that the Home Secretary, in his speech, swept out of the way in a very easy manner the possibility of approaching this question from the point of view of intent.
I understood the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to say that it would only be

necessary for an accused person to go into the witness box and to assert, and assert sufficiently long and loudly, that he did not have this intention and that would be the end of the matter. My hon. and learned Friends will have their views about this, but I should not have thought that to approach the question from the point of view of intent meant that, if the accused said that he did not have the intent, there could be no question of its being held that he had had intent. All kinds of evidence could be brought and all sorts of approaches could be made in relation to this matter.
So far as the rather horrific documents which the Home Secretary produced to the House, and in particular the words which he quoted, were concerned, it would be very difficult indeed, even if one approached this matter purely from the viewpoint of intent, for the accused person not to be caught by the Bill. It does not, therefore, seem to me as though one can dismiss the matter quite as easily as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman appeared to do.
Therefore, I think that a much better and more comprehensive Measure could, and should, have been introduced. It may be said that the Bill is a small step in the right direction, a harbinger of a wider Bill. If the Home Secretary, or whoever replies to the debate, can give a definite assurance that we will have this Session a Bill dealing with the question of obscene libel generally, that would make me somewhat happier; but, even so, I would still be rather worried, on the experience of the present Bill, as to what we would have in a Bill emanating from the Home Office at the present time.
The difficulty about the whole question of the law of obscene libel is the famous Hicklin judgment, given by Lord Chief Justice Cockburn in 1868. My great objection to the Bill is that it takes a great number of words—I think, unfortunate words—which have already done more than their fair share of harm, from the Hicklin judgment and places them in the very centre of the Bill. To that extent, it is a retrograde step.
What happened in the Hicklin case was that a very respectable Wolverhampton trader who was a member of a rather extreme Protestant society went to London and bought a number of copies


of an anti-Roman Catholic pamphlet which was called, "The Confessional Unmasked" with a sub-title of "Some Questions Put To Females In Confessions." He brought back copies of the pamphlet and circulated them in Wolverhampton, selling them not at a profit, but to serve his purpose, which he believed to be a desirable one.
The case came before the magistrates in Wolverhampton, who, I believe, found in his favour. The case was then put up, and Hicklin, being the senior of the magistrates, was called upon to state a case. It was in this way that Lord Chief Justice Cockburn came to give his famous judgment, which has remained the fountain of the law on this point ever since. This was the essence of the judgment:
The test of obscenity is whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.
Quite a few of the phrases contained in that language will be familiar to anybody who has read the Bill which we have before us today.
From that judgment, it can be said that three main propositions of law follow. The first is that the important thing is the tendency to deprave. It is not necessary to show whether anybody has been corrupted; it does not have to be shown that any evil consequence has, in fact, occurred as a result of what has been published. All that has to be proved is this rather vague thing, a tendency to corrupt.
The second point is that intent is clearly considered of no relevance, because whatever else was the intent in the Wolverhampton case, it was clearly not the intent of the man concerned to sell pornographic literature in the streets of Wolverhampton. His intention might have been right or wrong, but it was something entirely different from that which was held to be the result of the man's action.
The third point is that while intent was of no importance, the type of persons among whom the literature might circulate was a matter of considerable importance. It is my view that this judgment, which has remained the fountain of the law, has done a great deal of harm during the eighty-five years or so in which it has held sway.
It is partly on that basis that Vizetelly was prosecuted in 1888 and 1889 for publishing the works of Zola and Flaubert. Zola's "La Terre" was prosecuted in this country within three weeks of Zola being awarded the Legion of Honour in France. Three years subsequently, just to show that opinion can change on these matters—and we are dealing with a rapidly changing body of opinion—when Zola came over he was feted by the whole of literary London. The judgment in the Hicklin case was further the basis of a good deal of the trouble in the late 1920s which is associated with the name of Joynson-Hicks, later Lord Brentford, and it is the cause of a good deal of the uncertainty and doubt to which I have already referred and which exists today.
What we are doing today is taking a number of the words which have already caused so much trouble over a wider field and enshrining them for the first time, as far as I know, in a Statute. That seems to me to be an entirely undesirable state of affairs. The end of Clause 1 says:
in such a way that the work as a whole would tend to corrupt a child or young person into whose hands it might fall (whether by inciting or encouraging him to commit crimes or acts of violence or cruelty or in any other way whatsoever).
That owes its inspiration directly to the judgment of Lord Chief Justice Cockburn in the case of Hicklin. Those words include tendency but exclude intent, and there is the question of who might see the publication but not, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Neepsend pointed out, the question of who it is designed for or who it is intended should look at it, but merely the persons into whose hands in some casual way it might fall. Here we have all the undesirable features of the Hicklin judgment perpetuated in statute form. To that extent, the Bill seems to be a step backwards rather than forwards.
It has already been argued that the effect of the Bill is closely restricted and that it applies only to a work which consists wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures. In discussing the Bill all its supporters, certainly, and practically all hon. Members have primarily in mind the horror comics of which we have heard a good deal recently and which we all dislike. But because today, in 1955, we


have horror comics in the forefront of our minds when discussing the Bill, do not let us get into the position of thinking that in time to come the Bill can apply only to horror comics.
After all, learned judges have often stated that it is what is said in Acts of Parliament and not what is in the minds of Members of Parliament which counts as far as the application of the law is concerned. It would be peculiarly foolish and ironical that when dealing with an issue in which we are told that intent cannot be brought in, we said that the Bill was all right because it was our intention that it should be concerned only with horror comics. Intentions can be perverted and the Bill may in future be given a much wider application.
I would recall the words of Lord Campbell speaking on the Measure that became the Obscene Publications Act, 1857, under which persons are not prosecuted but destruction orders are obtained. Speaking on that Measure in the House of Lords Lord Campbell said it was
intended to apply exclusively to works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth and of a nature calculated to shock the common feelings of decency in a well regulated mind.
That is what Lord Campbell said when that Bill was going through the House of Lords, but that is the Act under which the Decameron was ordered to be destroyed by the Swindon magistrates last year.
We have to look ahead to see how our legislation of today may be interpreted at a future time when, as we all probably hope, horror comics will no longer be circulating in the way we see them circulating now, and moving about the House today, and when those horror comics may have been forgotten. Therefore, I hope that we shall not approach this matter in a light-hearted way, and I hope, in particular, that the suggestion will be closely considered that was made by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Neepsend, that at the very least we ought to have the Director of Public Prosecutions centralising any actions taken under the Bill.

Mr. Michael Foot: And a new Director.

Mr. Jenkins: And, perhaps, a new Attorney-General.
Unless we do, any busybody anywhere in the country will be able to start prosecutions. He will have only to take the matter before a local bench of magistrates, and it is certainly not outside my imagination, and I doubt whether it is outside the imagination of many hon. Members today, that sometime in the future we may, in these circumstances, have the most ludicrous and undesirable prosecutions.
It is not that one cannot think of material except that in horror comics that may be brought forward in a prosecution. My right hon. and learned Friend has already referred to a survey in "Picture Post" or another illustrated magazine dealing with the horrors of war in some form or another, and the hon. and learned Member for Northwich has mentioned how pictures by Hogarth might be used to illustrate a booklet. One can imagine a children's illustrated book of classical tales or even of Shakespearian tales which might well be held in certain circumstances to come within the purview of the Bill, and "The Times" this morning was rather frightened about what might happen to "Three Blind Mice."
We should, therefore, be careful to ensure that the Bill cannot be of any possible danger to anybody but the publishers of horror comics. I believe that we are in great danger of enacting a piece of illiberal and obscurantist legislation. For what purpose? No one likes horror comics, but I think that there is a great deal of evidence that the evil of them is now on the wane, that as a result of public agitation their circulation has declined a good deal.
We should be mindful of how little we really know about the direct causal relationship between horror comics or anything else people may read and people's actions, whether undesirable or not. We know very little about these matters. I read the other day an interesting survey published in New York by the staff of the Research Centre of Human Relations of New York University, which went precisely into this question. It found that it was very difficult to establish any firm conclusion, but it found as the beginning of a conclusion that if children read horror comics and read a lot of other things as well there was no marked effect by the horror comics. What the survey


did show was that juvenile delinquency might be associated with those who read nothing but horror comics. But this might be as much due to the absence of other influences as to the positive effects of the horror comics themselves.
One cannot deduce that horror comics cause trouble to the mind, without knowing a great deal about the state of mind of the child or adolescent who wants to read only horror comics. I should not want to lay down firm rules about this, because I think it is a matter in which we should be humble in our judgments. We should not jump too quickly to the conclusion that because two things happen one necessarily happens as a result of the other.
I should like the Bill to be withdrawn. If it is not withdrawn I hope very much that the Home Secretary will adopt a welcoming attitude to Amendments—and I think they will need to be fairly sweeping Amendments—in Committee. I believe that he has good liberal instincts, as he has a good Liberal name. I cannot believe that, at a time when there is such a volume of informed and responsible opinions in favour of the liberalisation of our laws relating to obscenity and literature generally, the Home Secretary will want to go down to history as the perpetrator of an Act which enshrines the words of that judgment now ninety years old, and which have already done so much harm.

4.56 p.m.

Sir Hugh Linstead: I shall not follow the hon. Member for Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) very far in his references to the need to extend the Bill to obscenity, except to say that I suspect that when the Bill is in Committee we shall have fairly clearly brought before us the reasons why my right hon. and gallant Friend was wise in confining it to the comparatively narrow scope of the horror comics. Surely the answer to the hon. Gentleman is that there are limits to what can be done by an Act of Parliament, and that public opinion, far more than an Act of Parliament, is the criterion by which obscenity and the matters covered by the Bill have to be measured and by which behaviour is regulated.
It is because I believe that that I find myself disagreeing with my right hon. and gallant Friend and with the right hon.

and learned Gentleman the Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice), who spoke first for the Opposition, as to the real value of the Bill in achieving what it seeks to do. If one takes that view I think one ought to begin with the worst possible example of what the Bill set outs to remedy, and I do not think one can do better than quote the example given to the House by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. King) on 30th November.
It was an example of the sort of thing that everyone here must agree needs remedying. It was this:
The 'Frankenstein 'for January, 1954, tells the story of a mad scientist who with Frankenstein digs up from a grave the body of a woman just executed that day for murder. By electrifying the corpse they bring her back to life as a female monster, who is criminally lunatic and who shows her lunacy by going about tearing up animals and people for fun. After much violence she destroys the monster and himself with a doll which contains a time-bomb in its stomach."—[Official Report: 30th November, 1954; Vol. 535, c. 74–5.]
That is the sort of thing with which we in this country have found ourselves faced over the last few weeks, and which the Bill seeks to bring to an end.
Bearing that example in mind, it is interesting to quote the views expressed on behalf of the Government on 1st August, 1952, when the Joint Undersecretary of State made two statements which ought to be recalled. My hon. Friend said:
… responsibility for the moral welfare of a child must primarily rest with its parents and teachers. There is a limit, and a proper limit, to what the law or a Government Department can do in this field.
Earlier, he had said:
There have been other attempts made,"—
that is, at definition—
but I can assure the House that they do not appear to be any more satisfactory, and I think it is fair to say that it is virtually impossible by statute to seek to define what it is that we want to control in this context."—[Official Report, 1st August, 1952; Vol. 504, c. 2035–38.]
I cannot help feeling that the attitude which was then expressed was really a wise Parliamentary and Governmental attitude and that the House finds itself today, as it does sometimes, carried forward on a current of public opinion to seek to do something by Act of Parliament which I very much doubt whether an Act of Parliament can achieve.
If one wants a most simple example of that, I remind the House that as a result of the matter being raised on two or three occasions in the House, and as a result of an exhibition staged by the National Union of Teachers a short time ago, none of these horror comics is now being imported into this country. The two firms in this country which were printing and publishing them, one firm in Leicester and the other in Glasgow, have stopped doing so, and except perhaps for a small shop or two it is virtually impossible to buy any of the horror comics which have been exposed in that way. I cannot help feeling that fundamentally, in a robust political community, that is the way to deal with matters of this kind.
In considering the Bill, one sees the difficulty in which one gets in trying to regulate matters of opinion by Act of Parliament. The draftsman had the problem of defining as tightly as possible the various expressions which were to be made illegal. He recognised, of course, that every illustration depicting an act of violence, if taken by itself, could not conceivably be made illegal. Therefore, we have two escape provisions. The first appears at the beginning of Clause 1, which limits the application of the Bill to
any book, magazine or other like work which consists wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures …
Therefore, if the whole publication does not consist wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures it escapes the Bill.

Mr. Follick: Would not the hon. Member agree that there should be incorporated a provision that newspapers generally should not give reports of brutality and the like, which youngsters might read and thereby have their minds influenced?

Sir H. Linstead: That is a theme which the hon. Member might care to develop if he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker.
The first escape provision which the draftsman has had to import into the Bill has the effect of letting out any horror comic cartoon which is published in any publication the greater part of the contents of which is not pictures but words. In other words, the cartoon of which I read a description in quoting from a speech by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test, will only be illegal

under the Bill if it is in a book which is restricted to pictures and cartoons. It would not be so if it were in some publication in which it was mainly surrounded by letterpress.
One can see the case quite clearly in a publication such as the one which I now show to the House. It has a page of cartoons, but the greater part of it consists of letterpress. If the publishers of that publication chose to put in the publication the type of horror cartoon which I have mentioned they would not be struck at by the Bill. That seems to me one very strong reason, if not for its withdrawal, at least for the most careful examination of the Bill in Committee, because in that respect the Bill does not strike at the very thing at which it was designed to strike.
The second matter to which I want to draw the attention of the House, and to which I have already drawn the attention of the Home Secretary in a letter, is that I believe that this is one occasion on which the House, carried forward on a wave of public opinion, is in danger of doing serious injustice to publishers, not of the horror comic but of the ordinary type of Western and detective story and "space man" comic, to which the right hon. and learned Member for Neepsend drew attention.
We may all have our own views about the value of these publications. Some people may feel that they are trash but in them, by and large, black is black, white is white, right is right, wrong is wrong, and virtue triumphs in the end, and, generally, these publications put a premium on courage, which is perhaps not a bad virtue to underline in the world today. The difficulty to which the Bill puts publishers of legitimate comics—although "comics" is perhaps not the best description of them—is that these publishers have their ordinary trade channels of distribution and they have their ordinary set conventions of stories, authors and artists, which have run on for many years. Inevitably, violence is a part of the story which they have to tell, even if it is only a straightforward cowboy and Indian act of violence.
It will be clear from careful reading of the Bill that an act of violence or cruelty is only hit by the Bill if the work as a whole has certain defects. That is all right from the point of view of the


law, but it is not all right from the point of view of the small stationer who has to handle these comics. Not unnaturally, distributors have already gone back to the publishers. In letters, of which I have some copies, they have said, "We want an undertaking that any material we handle is outside the scope of the Bill. Failing that we drop it. We are not going to run the risk of prosecution."
This brings us immediately to the basic difficulty created by a Bill of this kind, to which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster) and the hon. Member for Stechford referred. The Bill will be interpreted by hundreds of petty sessional courts, whose opinion about what is violent and what is not violent and what may tend to corrupt and not corrupt may depend on the individual views of individual magistrates.
It seems to me that publishers of legitimate comics have an unanswerable case when they say to the House, "Do not come along on a wave of public opinion and do irreparable damage to a perfectly legitimate piece of publication which has given enjoyment and satisfaction to many generations of young people." The answer to that is the answer which my hon. and learned Friend gave. He said that consent to a prosecution should be given from some central point. It might be the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Attorney-General or the Home Secretary. If that is not done, it seems to me that we are to have sporadic prosecutions by the police or private prosecutors all over the country, with gross injustice done to publishers, because the ordinary stationer will be afraid to handle their products. I very much hope that when we come to the Committee stage an Amendment to have a centralised authority for prosecutions will be moved.
I recognise that with the present current of opinion in the country and the House the Bill must be given its Second Reading. But we all believe that the fewer prosecutions there are under it, or even if there are none at all, its purpose will be achieved, because it will have served as a warning.
I would ask my right hon. and gallant Friend to give consideration to these points. Will he give as much time as possible between now and the Committee stage to allow the Amendments and views

that have not yet reached him from the publishing trade to be considered? Secondly, will he consider whether it is necessary to use the word "violence" without any qualification at all and whether it should not be "violence" linked with moral turpitude or something of that kind? Also, would my right hon. and gallant Friend consider whether one month is a sufficient time after the passing of the Act for it to be brought into operation? I myself think that a period like three months should be the period, for it would enable all concerned to settle down and adjust themselves to the new conditions.
Finally, I hope it will be possible to introduce a centralised authority for prosecutions so that we do not get sporadic prosecutions all over the country.

5.14 p.m.

Mr. Michael Foot: I do not think the Home Secretary can be altogether pleased at the reception which his Bill has so far been given, because all the speeches from the back benches have been highly critical of it and the last two or three have certainly gone very far, almost to the point of demanding the withdrawal of the Bill.
I think that that is an illustration of its real defect—that it is slipshod, that it has been drawn up in an haphazard and an inadequate fashion, that it is dealing with a complicated subject, and that the Home Secretary, instead of applying his mind and that of his Department to the whole subject, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) said in a very powerful speech, has neglected the advice that has been given by the Society of Authors and others who have a great deal to say on the matter. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman has, in fact, produced a very inadequate Bill.
The defect of the Bill could be defined by saying either that it is inoperable or that it is so widely embracing that it becomes a threat to freedom. The hon. Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead) indicated that every publisher who publishes a whole series of horror comics plus letterpress as well may, under the terms of the Bill as it stands, be able to get away with it, although neither I nor anyone else can understand on what principle it should be argued that action


should be taken to stop this kind of publication if it happens to be accompanied by some kind of letterpress as well.
Surely it cannot be argued that it is wrong to publish these horror comics by themselves, but if they are accompanied with some horrific letterpress then they are quite all right. We know that the Government have got into the position of stating this proposition in the Bill, because somebody in the Home Office must have thought that at some point there had better be some regard for free speech and free expression of opinion. Therefore, they put this reference about
wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures
in order to give some protection and the Home Secretary is now relying on it as being his main protection.
We know that if this Bill goes through in the form in which it is cast, that protection is likely to be broken down. When magistrates come to examine such issues, they are not going to be so crazy as the people in the Home Office who think that these distinctions do really exist. The magistrates will argue that if Parliament passed a Bill in order to suppress these horrible horror comics we must have meant it to apply to these publications even though some letterpress is included in them. That is how the Bill is likely to operate.
If we go further and say that the Bill is to be amended to include horror comics which are not wholly or mainly in pictures, but are accompanied by some kind of letterpress, if, in other words, we are to make the Government's intentions logical, the Bill becomes very widely embracing indeed. For example, what about the large number of newspapers which are published in this country?

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: The "Daily Mirror."

Mr. Foot: Yes, I was thinking of that. I had the "Daily Mirror" in mind. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice) gave a list of the things which were supposed to be discussed in these horror comics, death murder, sex and sadism. It is a very apt list of the staple product of a large section of the Sunday Press. I quote what has been said by my political opponent at the last election, Mr. Randolph Churchill.

He said quite a lot on this subject, referring in particular to the "Daily Mirror." This is what he said:
The principles, or lack of them, by which its mammoth circulation has been brought about are carefully explained. Crime and sex are the staple commodities which Geraldine House purveys … to a hungry world.
I do not think that many hon. Members would deny that definition.
But there are other journals, like the "Weekend Mail" and "Reveille," which have had phenomenal increases in circulation. The most spectacular increase in newspaper sales of that kind in the past ten years is due, I think most people would say, to the fact that the staple product which these newspapers sell is pornography in one form or another. That is how they have built up their sales.
There was also the spectacular increase in the sales of the "Sunday Dispatch" which was almost entirely due to the publication of a whole series of salacious serials, like "Emma," "Caroline," and "Lucretia," over a period with one following the other in sequence. All these ladies had a common attraction, and through it they helped to put up the sales of Lord Rothermere's "Sunday Dispatch."

Mr. Follick: "Forever Amber."

Mr. Foot: It started the series, and as a result enormous revenues have accrued to Lord Rothermere to such an extent that Mr. Randolph Churchill said he thought that Lord Rothermere ought to qualify for the title of "Pornographer Royal." Everybody knows this to be true. Everybody also knows that under the law of obscenity, to which my hon. Friend referred, as it was applied 30, 40 or 50 years ago, almost all these journals would come under its definition. Yet nobody in the House as far as I know thinks that any legal action should be taken against these newspapers. But surely this illustrates the difficulty of making a distinction.
I am not suggesting for a second that legal action should be taken against these newspapers. Heaven forbid! I think the way to deal with them and their proprietors is to identify those who make their living by the sale of pornography. Lord Rothermere, as we are told by Mr. Randolph Churchill, is at the head of the list, although there is fierce competition. They all should be identified. I do not


suggest that they should be suppressed, but everyone should know what kind of trade they are in. But the very fact that these journals might be held guilty of committing the same kind of crime with which this Bill is supposed to deal illustrates how difficult it is to draw a line. Therefore, the right hon. and gallant Gentleman should have been very much more careful in devising this Bill. He should have taken much more advice before he started on it.
It is not surprising perhaps that the Home Office has dealt with only one aspect of this matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Stechford referred to the trials that have taken place of eminent publishers in the last few months. I think a great deal more ought to be said on that matter because, perhaps, the fact that innocent people have been prosecuted is a more important fact than that some horror comics might be circulated. It is not surprising that the Home Office, from what we have known of it in the past, is more eager to devise more ways of prosecuting than of liberating.

Major Lloyd-George: Major Lloyd-George indicated dissent.

Mr. Foot: The right hon. and gallant Gentleman shakes his head, but if he were as eager to liberate as to prosecute, he could have followed the advice my hon. Friend the Member for Stechford suggested and which the Society of Authors offered him.

Major Lloyd-George: I think the hon. Member would agree that this matter, which is not relevant to this Bill—I am not complaining of that—is one which no one denies is an extremely difficult and complicated matter, and has been for many years. It is receiving very careful consideration, but that could not be done in a very short time.

Mr. Foot: I think the Home Secretary has now made a much better speech than he made earlier. He has made the case against the Bill. He has stumbled into all these difficulties and complications. He need not take my speech as an illustration, but the speeches delivered on either side of the House in this debate. The last speech illustrated what complicated difficulties the Home Secretary has stumbled into in dealing with this Bill. One does not reduce the difficulties by dealing with one aspect of the matter, but rather this method enhances them.

It would, in fact, have been simpler to try to deal with the whole range of the difficulties.
The Home Office is much more eager to suppress than to deal with injustice done to individuals under the law with which this matter is associated. It is no use the Home Secretary saying that these matters are not associated with that existing obscenity law because, in his original speech, he said that when the Home Office looked at the question of horror comics it tried first to see whether it should deal with the question under the law of obscenity. Having taken that course and looked at that law, surely he should have been more outraged at what has been happening to innocent publishers serving the public of this country in the last few years.
Some examples have been given by my hon. Friend the Member for Stechford; I will give another example, that of Mr. Frederick Warburg, a most eminent and respected publisher. This is what he said, and it is most relevant to this Bill. In the court he was charged with exactly the offence with which some will be charged under this Measure. He said:
The charge of publishing an obscene libel, a lewd book, a piece of pornography, call it what you will, is an exceptionally nasty one. For the sake of money you are accused of corrupting the minds of men and women, in particular you are accused of corrupting a young boy or girl into whose hands the book may fall.
Mr. Warburg was accused of that crime and for several months had to live under the shadow of that charge. When he got to the court he had many well-known writers who wished to come forward—Malcolm Muggeridge, Walter Allen, C. P. Snow and Graham Greene. All were prepared to give evidence in the witness box on his behalf, but under the existing law none was allowed to appear in the witness box. Does not the Home Secretary think that is outrageous? Under the law we are proposing to pass I understand that the same procedure will apply and, in the same circumstances, a publisher would not be able to call eminent witnesses of that kind, just as Mr. Warburg was denied that right.
It may be said, "What are you shedding tears for? Mr. Warburg fought and won." He did, and all honour to him. English freedom owes much more to Mr. Warburg than to the Home Secretary,


but if the Home Secretary had any sympathy for a man who is charged and has to undergo that ordeal, he could have dealt with that question instead of introducing this piecemeal Bill. Some other publishers were not so successful as Mr. Warburg.
That is not the only danger because. Director of Prosecutions, for some unknown reason, has restarted this kind of campaign, just as a former Home Secretary—Joynson-Hicks—did in the twenties. It may be because of a campaign about horror comics or for some other reason. In an atmosphere of suppression, it is not the individual cases that come before the courts which matter so much as the general effect produced on what booksellers are prepared to sell or libraries are prepared to stock. It may be that many people engaged in the business of selling these products will take action which they think is necessary according to the law, but which in fact would not be upheld in the courts at all. The vague fear all contributes to suppression.
No one need think that this is a fantastic fear. In 1891, there was a furious denunciation of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" and "Jude the Obscure." The worst thing that happened in consequence was that Smiths withdrew those books from circulation. They withdrew them, not because of a legal decision, but because they wanted to protect themselves against a legal decision of which they thought there was even a faint possibility. As the hon. Member for Putney said, that is a real danger in this Bill.
Another example is that in 1895 all the libraries of this country declined to stock George Moore's "Esther Waters." That is an illustration of what can happen when we introduce a Measure of this kind. We create a fear much more widespread than the precise Measure we are proposing to pass through the House of Commons intends to create. And, heaven knows, the Home Secretary cannot claim that the Measure he is introducing is precisely and neatly defined. It is so widely embracing that it could cause even bigger fears than the law of obscenity in 1857.
Another danger was indicated by the hon. and learned Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster), who asked whether the person who made the drawings which would come under the proscription of this

Bill could be prosecuted under the Bill. It is not clear whether a state of affairs might arise where a bookseller and publisher could be prosecuted but not the perpetrator of the drawings. There is an opposite danger, illustrated under the law of obscenity Act as it stands. An author might have produced a book—or, if we apply it to this case, someone might have made a drawing—and he might then be deprived of the right of defending himself, and for this reason: that if the bookseller pleads guilty the author has not a chance of defending himself That happened in the case of Havelock Ellis and his famous book, "Sexual Inversion," which everyone now regards as a classic. He had prepared his defence and wanted to go to court to defend himself but was denied the right to do so because the bookseller has already decided to plead guilty. This is what the magistrate said about Havelock Ellis's book:
It is impossible for anybody with a head on his shoulders to open the book without seeing that it is a pretence and a sham and that it is merely entered into for the purpose of selling this obscene publication.
If people could say that about Havelock Ellis's book, do not let anybody be dogmatic today about saying that the Bill could not be improperly used. There should certainly be provision in it for the author to be able to defend himself, and that ought to be provided under the law of obscenity, if only the Home Secretary was prepared to deal with it.
It may be argued by some people that we need not have these fears because this relates only to pictorial matters and the publication of pictures which are regarded as repulsive and horrible and that in that sense there is no fear. Other examples have been given such as that by Sir Alan Herbert about the works of Hogarth, and I suppose that might be excluded from proscription under this Bill because there was some letterpress. However, only on Saturday I bought a copy of "Hudibras" illustrated by Hogarth, and certainly some of the drawings are horrific. I am sure that a magistrate looking at it might at any rate be able to say that it should be the intention of Parliament to deal with it.
I have never seen "Gulliver's Travels" properly illustrated for children, but if it were I am certain that it would be something that even the "Daily Mirror" would not serialise. If one were to do


the job properly one would have to do it in the most horrific fashion.
If any hon. Gentleman says that these examples are fantastic, let us take the famous case in the United States in 1937 of a film called "Birth of a Baby" made by the American Committee on Maternal Welfare. The film was refused a licence for public exhibition by the State Commission of Education for New York State. "Life" magazine then published a series of photographs from the film. Four news dealers were arrested for selling the magazine, and the editor of "Life" sold a copy to a detective as a test case and was arrested.
The case was fought and it was won in the interests of freedom. This was partly because "Life" magazine was a powerful organisation prepared to fight it and because Mr. Morris Ernst, the well known United States lawyer who has fought so many of these cases, was prepared to fight on this particular issue. It was a pictorial production which some authorities in the United States regarded as being pornographic and something which should be suppressed. However, the reason why the magazine succeeded in winning the case might be that in some respects at least and in some states in the U.S.A. the law of obscenity is better than ours; and it is better than ours on precisely the point which the Home Secretary this afternoon dismissed in such a trifling fashion.
I want now to quote from the judgment given by Judge John Woolsey in the famous "Ulysses" case in the United States. It was under that judgment that the fight was made and those who fought were able to prevent the suppression of "Ulysses" in certain States of the U.S.A. The judge said:
In any case where a book is claimed to be obscene, it must be determined whether the intent with which it was written was what is called, according to the usual phrase, pornographic, that is written for the purpose of exploiting obscenity.
That is part of the most famous judgment given in the United States on the whole issue, and yet the Home Secretary, so much wiser than Judge John Woolsey, is prepared to say that it is quite impossible to have a real definition of "intent." If he did not say it was quite impossible——

Major Lloyd-George: The hon. Gentleman has made a mistake. I made two

references to "intent." I have here a copy of what I actually said. I first said that if one uses "intent" as one uses the word in ordinary every-day life, that would be quite impossible because all the man would need to do to avoid a conviction would be to say that it was not his intention. I went on to say that if, on the other hand, the word was used in the sense that a man must be presumed to intend the reasonable results of his action, the test becomes an objective one and the question for decision is whether a particular publication would, in fact, tend to corrupt, which is the principle on which the Clause is based.

Mr. Foot: Once again, the Home Secretary has underlined the whole point. There is a distinction between whether one can have intention as the test or the test as under the Hicklin judgment. There is a choice, and faced with this choice the Home Secretary has chosen the words which were incorporated in the Hicklin judgment, where as we are saying, and the Society of Authors argued in a long memorandum to the Home Secretary, that the test should be that of intention. The Home Secretary says that one cannot do that, or, at any rate, that for some reason it would be very difficult. What I am arguing is that if he says that it is so difficult he ought before introducing a Bill of this nature to understand what is done in, for instance, the United States and many other countries. Many countries have dealt with the difficulty in a more liberal fashion than we have. It is a great pity that when he was tackling the subject the Home Secretary did not study what had been presented to him by persons who have reason to know about the subject. Above all, he should have considered the case of persons who have been persecuted under the present law.
I hope that we shall at least have a promise from the Home Secretary that he will introduce a Bill as soon as possible to dispel the fear of honest publishers. In any case, whether he makes such a promise or not, it has already been fully shown that the Bill, if it is to be adequate for the purpose defined by the Home Secretary, involves the greatest dangers and certainly dangers upon which we should not embark without examining the whole range of the problem which is presented at this time. Therefore, I appeal


to him to withdraw the Bill in view of the protests which have been made against it from all sides of the House.

5.37 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Bell: The last three speeches from both sides of the House have expressed great doubts about the Bill. I must say at once that I share those doubts, and for very much the same reasons.
In the first place, I do not like the objective test put forward in the Bill for intent to corrupt, any more than I like the objective test which is at present applied in cases of obscenity. I understand the difficulty which the Home Secretary put forward about adopting the criterion of intention. When I say I think intention should be the test, I mean "intention," not in its legal sense of intent, which, as my right hon. and gallant Friend rightly says, is an objective test. If we use "intent" to signify that a man is presumed to intend the natural consequence of his acts, it is true that we have abolished intention at the same time as we have put it in; but if we use "intention" to mean actual intention then I cannot agree with my right hon. and gallant Friend that a man could evade the test by simply going into the witness box and repeating, "I did not mean to corrupt, and I had not that intention when I wrote or drew the publication or when I published it."
After all, there is before the court one other extremely cogent piece of evidence, the offending matter, pictures or letterpress, and from the pictures or letterpress the court is entitled to decide that it does not believe the man's evidence that he did not mean it and had not got the requisite intention. So it is unduly simplifying the problem to say that the man can get out of his difficulty just by saying that he did not mean it. I cannot help feeling that if words were used which made it clear that actual intention was the test of what the man meant, the courts would not find it difficult to apply that test in a clear case. If the case is not clear, then surely it is most important that the man should be acquitted.
The hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot) and my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead) both mentioned what I have felt was the Bill's main defect. It had to be limited to allow reasonable freedom of expression, and it

is limited by being made to apply only where the book, magazine, or other work consists wholly or largely of pictures. As so drafted the Bill falls down, because any publisher of horror comics who seriously wants to get round that can do so. He has only to publish a six page magazine of which three and a half pages are letterpress and two and a half pages are pictures and he has clearly defeated the Bill's purpose.
So one cannot really stop horror comics by a Bill with such ample provision for safety. If, on the other hand, as the hon. Member for Devonport and my hon. Friend the Member for Putney pointed out, one tightens up the Bill to close that loophole and make it apply to a horror strip or series of horror strips in a newspaper, or any other publication, then one also wipes out the safeguard and all sorts of things will be included under the provisions of the Bill. My right hon. and gallant Friend said that the big safeguard was this stipulation about the pictorial nature of the matter.
Then I come on to the rather broader considerations which worry everybody in the House. We have all seen these horror comics either directly or in reproduction. We all think that they are disgusting and that the trade in them is a ghastly trade. We should all like to do something about it, but equally we are all very keenly aware of the danger of putting on the Statute Book Acts of censorship which accumulate and which, as time passes, are used for purposes which the Parliament that passed them never intended or even conceived.
There are some very interesting examples of that. I remember one Act passed in the 19th century—not really a censorship Act—to prohibit the printing of British or foreign stamps, or possessing plates for printing them. Parliament wanted to stop forgery in stamps, but the prosecutions which followed were mainly of publishers of stamp albums. As the Lord Chief Justice said in one of those successful prosecutions:
He is quite clearly guilty and not only that, the detective who has brought the plates here to prove his guilt is, in my opinion, equally guilty of the offence himself, because he was in possession of these etchings.
Last year we passed the Prevention of Crime Act prohibiting the possession of certain kinds of weapons. Several hon.


Members on both sides of the House expressed some disquiet about it, because we thought that as time passed that would also come to be applied in rather surprising ways.
We were reassured that merely decorative accoutrements would never be touched by that. But I saw that in Scotland the other day a man was convicted of wearing a ceremonial sword at a dance. In England there was a similar conviction for a similar sort of offence, although in England on appeal the conviction was quashed.

Mr. Rankin: A dirk and not a sword.

Mr. Bell: I must confess to the hon. Member that I cannot clearly remember after this time whether it was a dirk, skean-dhu, or a sword, but it was one of them.
I quote that only to show that what is clearly in the mind of the Parliament which passes the Act has little effect when, as time passes, the courts have only the text in front of them to decide how to apply the provisions of the Act.
The provisions of this Bill are that it is an offence to publish pictures of a repulsive or horrible nature. There is a great variety of opinions about what is repulsive and what is horrible. As the hon. Member for Devonport rightly said, a lot of us would put the "Daily Mirror" in that category and, perhaps, not confine our attitude about that only to the "Daily Mirror." There are many publications which Members would say it is monstrously wrong to suppress by law, but some magistrates somewhere, or some judge, at some time—and that is the point—might decide they were horrible.
Then comes "tend to corrupt." The whole argument of human philosophy, the great debate that goes on in our lives from generation to generation, is about what it is that tends to corrupt and what tends to ennoble. Hon. Members on both sides of the House sometimes have very different ideas about what corrupts and what improves. It is the very stuff of human disagreement. I could not help thinking, when the right hon. and learned Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice) said that this was in line with previous statutes and that Parliament had intervened on many occasions to protect children over cigarettes, drugs and drink,

that this is the food of the mind. I can unashamedly quote Milton:
Repasting of the mind ought to be arbitrary.
Not one of those precedents he quoted referred to filtering the reading, the mental experiences of children. That is the intention here, and it is a most dangerous intention.
The responsibility is first with the parents and with the schoolmasters. It is a great responsibility for Parliament to decide that we will make children virtuous by keeping them away——

Mr. Maurice Orbach: The actions we have taken for limiting children's access to the cinema or films have that objection.

Mr. Bell: The hon. Member has made a valid point. It is quite true that we have set up film censorship. It is equally true that there exists theatrical censorship under the authority of law exercised by the Lord Chamberlain. I unashamedly say that I disagree with it and regard it as a blemish in both cases, so there is no logical inconsistency in my argument.
If children are to be protected in their youth from these questionable influences, what kind of children will we get when they grow up, if children are never taught to see things of which they disapprove? Again I quote. If they are not to have the chance of finding out:
the utmost that vice can offer her followers"—

Mr. Cyril Osborne: Let them taste poison.

Mr. Bell: I am talking about influences on the mind. My hon. Friend mentions poison, but that is an absurd comparison.
If we banish the risk of their seeing undesirable periodicals and publications in their childhood, what will they do when they come up against "No Orchids for Miss Blandish" in their adolescence, if all they have had is a fencing out of their experience. The only way in which a child can obtain strength and maturity of judgment is by being gradually inoculated through wise parents and wise teachers and given an opportunity of judgment between good and evil in increasingly difficult doses until it has formed a judgment which is mature, because it is confident, because the child


has exercised free will all the way along, although I would be the first to admit, of course, that the experience must be screened and modulated by parents and teachers. I do not believe that it is the function of Parliament to do that job by statute.

Mr. George Thomas: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that when they see these horror comics young people are unable to discriminate, and if——

Mr. S. Silverman: Oh yes, they can.

Mr. Thomas: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could when he was six, but the normal person, the average person, is not so gifted. Therefore there will not be the choice in adolescence to which the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. R. Bell) referred.

Mr. Bell: May I point out to the hon. Member that I am not putting in a plea for horror comics, I think that they are a thoroughly bad thing. I am saying, first, that the responsibility for keeping children away from something they think the child too immature to judge is the responsibility of the parents; and secondly, that this Bill, if it becomes an Act, will as the years pass, certainly not be limited to horror comics. It will remain an Act of censorship and the hon. Member will be surprised to see what use is being made of it in 10 or 15 years' time.

Mr. Osborne: My hon. Friend is arguing that it is up to the parents to protect their children. What of children who have no parents and no one to protect them?

Mr. Bell: With respect to my hon. Friend, I said that it was for the parents to protect and to teach and, I say frankly, to expose children from time to time to temptations within their intellectual reach. Are we to legislate for that tiny category of children to which my hon. Friend refers, if indeed any exist in our modern society? Are there orphans who have no foster homes?

Mr. Osborne: Oh.

Mr. Bell: Are there no institutions? Is no care provided of any kind? Is there no provision in our present day society for such children? How many are there who are waifs and strays? I doubt

whether any such child exists in the length and breadth of our country today, and I think that the point put by my hon. Friend is quite unreal.
I do not wish to spoil my argument by overstating it. These are big issues before the House today, and I hope that no hon. Member will caricature the point of view I am advancing. It is not a thing about which one may be absolute, but I put it to the House that we must be very careful before placing such a Measure as this on the Statute Book. We do not want our children to grow up entirely protected from all but pre-digested influences. We want them to be reasonably robust in their judgment.
We must remember also, whatever we may think about children, that we want adults to be robust in their judgment. This Bill does not only strike at writings and drawings intended for children, but at any writings and drawings, if they would tend to corrupt children or young persons into whose hands they might fall. That covers almost everything. How are we to define what is intended to corrupt either for children or grown-ups?
The hon. Member for Devonport made a powerful speech in which he appealed for a reform in the law relating to obscenity, and I associate myself with him. May I add that I am in grave doubt about this law altogether. Intention is the better test, but how are we to define intention?
When I was an undergraduate at Oxford I read French and Italian literature. I was recommended to make a special study of the "Decameron," the works of Rabelais and the "Heptameron" of the Queen of Navarre—[Laughter.] There is no need for hon. Members, especially those who are pressing for this Bill, to be so amused about that. I read them with great care. The question I would put to the House is, how does one arrive at a definition which would make the "Decameron" safe, supposing it had not been written 100 years ago but was being published now?
The hon. Member for Devonport put forward a criterion by which test it would fall, the intention to exploit sex. In the "Decameron" that is done with wonderful grace. The "Decameron" is almost a renaissance; it is a wonderful preoccupation with the individual and the human body and spirit. It embodies the spirit


of the Renaissance, but I do not know how one would put that in an Act of Parliament. If grace be the test, what about Rabelais? There is no grace, but a tremendous grossness. There we have a really gross work, and yet who would want to ban Rabelais? But: suppose he were published today; suppose Rabelais were a new author of whom we had not heard and he published "Pantagruel" or "Gargantua"?
Then there is the "Heptameron" of the Queen of Navearre, obviously the work of an over-sexed woman, a prurient work in many ways, but who would want to ban that? I cannot attempt to define what it is that distinguishes such works from works of pornography, yet I know that there is a distinction. What I should want to see in a law regarding obscenity or horror, if we have to have one at all, is something exceedingly narrow, so as to allow a lot of guilty people to escape rather than that any work of real value should be caught.
It may be that there is a present phenomenon in these horror comics about which something should be done. I have considerable doubts about it, but possibly that is so. If it is, I wish to say now that in my opinion we should put this Bill on the Statute Book only if it contains a time Clause. It will not do much harm during the next three or five years, because everyone will be aware of the reasons for which it was passed. But three or five years from now no one knows what use may be made of such a Measure. I hope therefore that, if the Bill goes to a Committee, we shall insert a time limit so that it will be applied by judges and benches of magistrates who at least know exactly what Parliament had in mind when the Measure was passed.

5.58 p.m.

Mr. George Thomas: We have listened to a number of speeches from hon. Gentlemen who are opposed to the Bill; and my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot) was quite right when he said that the Minister himself felt uncomfortable. But I wish to speak in support of the Bill, however.
The hon. Member for Buckingham shire, South (Mr. R. Bell) made an amazing proposition that anything should be available to our young people at any age——

Mr. R. Bell: No, I did not.

Mr. Thomas: As I understood the hon. Gentleman, he was arguing that it is wrong to censor what young people read.

Mr. Bell: I certainly did not say that. I said that Parliament should not do it by Statute. I said it was most important that parents and teachers should do it.

Mr. Thomas: The hon. Gentleman does not know much about young people.
Neither the teacher nor the parent is with the youngster all the time. The damage is done, not when youngsters are with their parents or teachers, but when they are away from the influence of the home or the school. It is exactly at that point that Parliament has a responsibility, and must step in.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport both made eloquent speeches about the law relating to obscenity and libel. But, for the purpose of their argument, they forgot the child. The whole point of this Bill is to protect children from being exploited by people who are not concerned with the welfare of young children, but whose only concern is about the capital which they can make. My hon. Friends may well have a case to make about the need for the revision of the law of obscenity and libel. I am not here to argue against it, but I think that they are being shortsighted in the extreme to stand in the way of this measure of protection for children because they cannot have what they want. It reminds me of the dog in the manger.
I realise that this is not a trifling Measure. The House gets excited whenever a question of the liberty of the subject is involved, and that is a good thing. It is right that hon. Members on both sides of the House should be concerned about guarding the liberties of our people, and any restrictive Measure requires the anxious consideration of the House. But civilisation itself rests upon the voluntary acceptance of inhibitions by the people, and this Bill is in perfect harmony with what our fathers have thought necessary to protect our standard of life.
We have experienced two world wars which have served to reduce certain values that were formerly highly


cherished. We have seen a falling away of standards in the years following the wars, and inevitably there is a need for the House to concern itself with what is happening to our young people. My view is that this Measure aims at protecting not so much children as adolescents, such as the young Service man who can hardly read but who is wallowing in the filth of these publications and who ends up before the magistrates. He is the fellow who might be saved by the Bill.

Mr. Foot: Teach him to read.

Mr. Thomas: By all means let us teach him to read, but we have to deal with people as they are.
I do not want to put him in the Army. I should not even put my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport in the Army—not even after his speech this afternoon. Although adolescents may come from good homes and be well educated, they are passing through a time of special stress and strain. The development of the individual in these years is critical, and can lead either to the honourable citizen or to the pervert; to misery or to happiness. It is all-important that everything which can be done to help the weaker of the adolescents shall be done.
I am not a lawyer, and I do not know whether the Bill is couched in the best language, but I am a schoolmaster, and I know that every teacher has been disturbed by the horror comics which have been available to our young people. I am grateful to the Home Secretary and to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice) for the tribute they paid this afternoon to the National Union of Teachers. That Union has played a not undistinguished part in the campaign which has led to the production of the Bill.
Teaching is not an easy profession. I worked in it for 13 years, and one of my attempted jokes is that I was rescued in 1945. That is not quite true.

Mr. S. Silverman: The profession was rescued.

Mr. Thomas: My hon. Friend is a very clever man.
The teaching profession is an honourable one, and it calls for a great deal from those who give their lives to it.

When, as a profession, it warns the nation that it is disturbed about an issue of this sort, the nation is obliged to listen. The Minister of Education and the Home Secretary have special responsibilities in this regard——

Mr. Victor Collins: And the school care committees.

Mr. Thomas: —and the school care committees.
The teaching profession has a right to look to this House for support when it takes an important stand. The position of the teachers in regard to the taking away of comics from children in school is not an easy one. The National Union of Teachers has sent advice from its legal adviser to teachers all over the country urging them to be on the alert—if urging were needed—in this matter, but in the end that remains the negative side of this question. The Bill is negative because it seeks to restrict and prohibit.
There is a positive side. Parents need not feel that their duty is done when the Bill is passed. A special obligation rests upon those who bring children into the world to see that they are brought up with clean and honourable minds and are given the best literature to read. A more positive approach is also needed from the publishers. They need not be frightened at this legislation. It will hit only those who publish literature which might tend to degrade the minds or to spoil the values of young people—and those publishers deserve to be hit. I have no pity for people who, for purposes of finance, are willing to exploit the minds of young people.
It is also important that school publishers shall produce more literature for what I call the slow-reading type—the one who finds it easier to look at the pictures. If one is a poor reader it requires moral effort to stick to the words when one can absorb in what the pictures are saying. It is important that the publishing profession shall realise that its moral obligations are as great as those of teachers and parents in this respect, and the House has a right to ask it to remember that fact.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Has the National Union of Teachers made a point about that?

Mr. Thomas: Yes. The National Union of Teachers is in close touch with the school publishers and is on the very best of terms with them.
The school publishers are doing a magnificent job. They do not produce this sort of muck. They produce literature or comics which have no harmful effect. But the people across the water or at home who have been cashing in on this unworthy market deserve to suffer the severest penalties.
The National Union of Teachers has called upon its members to do everything in their power to combat the effects of these comics and the reading of them, but it can appeal to its members only on behalf of children, and a great moral and social problem remains in relation to the adolescents. The House will avoid that problem at its peril.
We shall not be doing our duty to the nation if we close our eyes to the fact that the majority of young people are not touched by our youth activities. They are outside the fellowship of the young people's organisations, and, unless this Measure, or one similar in kind, is passed, we shall be exposing such young people to influences that are harmful to the nation as a whole. As a schoolmaster, I wish the Bill well.

6.10 p.m.

The Minister of Education (Sir David Eccles): May I say a word or two in reply to the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas)? I think he raised a very important point. I have already asked Her Majesty's Inspectors to take paticular care to see that there is an adequate supply of books, not only in classrooms but also in libraries. I take the view that one of the best ways of killing these comics is to provide a decent alternative, and, of course, especially in the new secondary modern schools—which have not yet had time to get going—it is important that the libraries should be built up with stocks of books as soon as possible. I should like to assure the hon. Gentleman that that matter is being looked at, and also that the publishers are co-operating very well.

6.11 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Nicolson: I am very glad that the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) ended his speech with

a homily to publishers, and that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education also intervened to say a few words on the same subject, because I must disclose to the House at once that I am a publisher of children's illustrated books. but not of horror comics.
I have an obvious interest in this debate. I do not want to be imprisoned, to have my premises invaded or my property confiscated, and I can only avoid those penalties if I know more precisely than this Bill tells me what I may publish and what I may not.
In no way do I object to the Bill in its intention. I think I can speak for most publishers when I say that we welcome any Measure which saves our profession from the blight of these discreditable practises which are adopted by very few of us. Therefore, we welcome the Bill, because we foresee that if some action is not taken, there will come a time when the horror comic becomes even more horrible. We are just at the beginning of this problem, and there is only one direction in which that type of publisher can go, and that is downwards, because his very trade is degradation.
That does not mean to say that I like this Bill in its present form. My right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary, in his introductory speech, said that he himself would be pleased if the Bill could be amended in Committee, and if I have the good fortune to be a member of the Standing Committee if the Bill goes upstairs, I shall attempt to insert a few suggestions of my own.
I will now deal only with the principle. I object to the Bill in its present form because of its vagueness. First, it is vague in defining the type of publication meant. We are told that it is only to apply to pictorial books or those which are mainly pictorial, but we are given no indication whether that will exclude magazines which include a lot of pictures.
We are also told that it applies only to publications which may fall into the hands of children, but we find it very difficult to distinguish between books specifically published for children and every other type of publication. Furthermore, there is no exclusion from the terms of the Bill of what are familiarly known as children's classics. There is no exclusion of picture books based upon familiar


Bible stories, or fairy stories. No distinction is made between drawings and photographs; both equally come under the ban.
It should be realised that any book which contains a great many illustrations thereby primarily becomes a picture book. Every publisher knows that illustrations kill the text. One has only to watch any hon. Member of this House reading a copy of "Punch," "Picture Post," or the "Illustrated London News" to see how quickly he flicks over a page of photographs and turns to the next page of photographs, skipping, in nine cases out of 10, all the textual matter in between. What we are really dealing with here is what we commonly mean by magazines.
In the second place, the real test is the effect upon children of these particular types of publication; and, here again, the publisher is left in some doubt. This Bill, by its very existence, makes a moral judgment. It says that horror comics are not desirable. But it shirks the consequential moral judgment that follows upon the first, in failing to distinguish between different types of brutality, violence, or repulsiveness, and that distinction is an absolutely vital one.
Tom Brown flies at the bully; the bully flies at Tom Brown. Both are equally culpable under this Bill, since both are examples of violence for the boy to imitate. A boy is naturally violent. Is he to be violent in the bully's way or in Tom Brown's way? We think that that moral distinction should be made in the Bill itself.
Thirdly, no distinction is made between a book or magazine dealing with crime in a sympathetic way and one dealing with it in an accusatory way. A criminal may get off scot free in the story, and he may be represented either as a reprehensible figure or as an admirable figure. He may be punished or not, but both types of story dealing with crime come under the ban of Clause 1. Again, a distinction should be made.

Mr. Maurice Edelman: Is it not the case that in Clause 1 the operative word is "corrupt," and, therefore, if there were illustrations of violence with a moral end in view, that clearly would not tend to corrupt? On the other hand, of course, if there were

scenes of flagellation or sexual sadism, that would tend to corrupt.

Mr. Nicolson: The hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) knows very well that children do not easily make moral judgments themselves. Raffles is a very good example. To most of us, Raffles is a "good" criminal, and he might easily be imitated by children given no other protection. We allow Raffles, and I think rightly so, but in general, we should distinguish between criminals who are represented as good people and those who are represented as bad, and the Bill itself makes no distinction between the two.
When we come to the question of cruelty, it is very difficult for the publisher to decide what will be regarded as cruel or not. We recently published a book—not a magazine, but an illustrated book—which, as hon. Members can see from the copy I hold in my hand, is a reproduction of a very famous children's story—"Pinocchio." This was originally written in Italian in 1883; it has been translated many times, and this is just one of a dozen such editions which have appeared recently.
Soon after its publication, we received a letter from a parent complaining most bitterly of the contents of this book, which she did not regard as suitable for children. She described it as "vicious in the extreme," and referred to several passages in the book which supported her claim. I should like to read one such passage to the House.
As most hon. Members know, Pinocchio is a puppet which has come to life, and, in the course of his adventures, he visits a farm where his foot is caught in a rabbit trap. I proceed with the quotation:
What with the agonising twinges of the snare gripping his shins, and his fright at finding himself quite alone in the dark, in the middle of strange fields, the puppet started to feel faint; when suddenly he saw a Firefly flitting overhead, and he called to him and said: 'Oh, my little Firefly, would you be so very kind as to free me from this torture?' 'Poor little son,' answered the Firefly, … 'How on earth did you get your legs stuck in those gruesome pieces of iron?'
That passage was picked out by the parent as being of so repulsive a nature that no decent publisher should publish it. But in my opinion, the passage cannot qualify as "repulsive" or "horrible," because it introduces a note of fantasy with


the firefly. In other words, as soon as a fantasy or fairy-story atmosphere is introduced we get away from the definition in Clause 1. The child no longer believes that we are dealing with things that might actually happen in fact. He is away in the clouds, in his own fairyland of imagination, where these horror incidents carry nothing like the same weight as if the fantasy had not been introduced.
Every respectable publisher looks for three things when he publishes a book of this sort, but there is no mention of them in the Bill. There is no mention of fear. There is no mention of sex. There is no mention of the danger which a child might incur by imitating some of the actions of the characters represented. I am not saying that these things ought to be mentioned, but merely illustrating how very incomplete a Bill of this sort must be.
If we represent sexual lust in a picture we may be producing something which to some people is the very opposite of repulsive. It might be extraordinarily attractive, but it can be just as damaging, leading to such vices as auto-eroticism or sometimes to much worse things among the children themselves. They have not the mature judgment to balance the premature sexual excitement which the pictures induce. There is no mention about that aspect in the Bill, but it is one of the most horrible elements of the horror comic.
I turn to the Clause dealing with the right of the police, on the order of a justice of the peace, to enter the premises of printers, publishers, and booksellers. Candidly, that frightens me very much, and I do not think it is right. Under this Clause, the lady who sent me the protest against Pinocchio could go to a justice of the peace, even without a copy of the book—[Hon. Members: "No."] Yes—and tell the magistrate that in her opinion there was a prima facie case for the magistrate to send a policeman to my offices to confiscate the books. [Hon. Members: "No."] Yes, the words are in the Bill. She has to convince the J.P. of the Tightness of her plea. Then the magistrate sends an ordinary police constable—he does not go himself, and we should not expect him to—to my office.
He is at liberty to force his way in if I do not want him to get in, and to

search my premises for copies of the offending document. If, in the course of his search, his eye happens to light upon other documents which did not take his fancy he can remove those, too. [Hon. Members: "No."] Yes. It is all in Clause 3. Great as is my respect for the police force, I would not submit the work of artists, and in some cases the textual matter which will be lying about my publishing office in the normal course of business, to the scrutiny and judgment of a policeman.
I want judgment to precede execution. If I propose to publish a book in which there is a libel, and the libelled person hears that the book is to be published, he can prevent the publication by obtaining an injunction against me. That is perfectly fair. That is the sort of thing I should like to see in the case of obscene or horrible books. I do not want to put such power into the hands of an ordinary justice of the peace and his emissaries, the policemen. I want a court case before my premises can be entered.
Furthermore, I should like some board or body, perhaps set up by publishers themselves, to which such works could be submitted for approval or disapproval before publication. That is exactly what happens in the case of films, so it cannot be very difficult. I should like to see in the Schedule to the Bill, or as an Order in Council published as a result of it. a much more exact definition of what we may or may not publish.
I want a permanent body of publishers or outsiders appointed to which any publisher can submit his manuscripts and illustrations before they even go to the printer and the block maker. In that way we shall avoid very much of the trouble foreseen by the Bill. AH but a tiny proportion of the publishers are wholly behind the public in their hatred of the horror comic. We wish to have a Measure such as this to support us so that children's minds are not poisoned by this trash.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson) has spoken from a point of view which it was desirable we should hear. His last argument did not seem to me, speaking entirely as a layman, to be really convincing, but much


of his earlier argument that publishers should be enabled to know precisely what their position is had weight in it.
The main arguments against the Bill seem to me to follow two general lines. One is the criticism, of which the hon. Gentleman's speech was a good and persuasive example, that the definition of what is criminal and wrong is not strict enough in the Bill. The other is that the Bill does not deal generally with the law of obscenity.
The Bill comes very near to giving a good and watertight definition, but I must stop at "very near." In reading the Bill and looking at Clause 1 carefully many times, I was not convinced that it would not be possible to apply the Bill in other cases to which we do not want it to be applied. I suggest to the Government that there is still need to tighten the definitions in Clause 1.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice) said a good deal about the phrase "wholly or mainly," which, as I read the Clause, applies to
any book, magazine or other like work …
As I followed my right hon. and learned Friend's argument, he applied it to "stories told in pictures." If he can apply it in that way, and an ordinary layman like myself applies it in quite a different way, it seems to me necessary to watch the language of Clause 1.
I am not convinced by the argument that intention should be introduced, with the exception of the point put by the hon. and learned Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster), who argued, I thought very sensibly, that intention ought to be made a possible line of defence. If it could be proved that the intention of the accused was not to corrupt, but to do something quite different from corrupting, the mind, I think that would be a reasonable defence.

Mr. F. Blackburn: Does not my hon. Friend think it is already difficult enough to understand what "tend to corrupt" means, without having the additional difficulties of proving the intention of the tendency to corrupt?

Mr. MacPherson: I should not like to follow that argument in detail. The very

simple and plain statement of the Home Secretary on this matter during the debate seemed to me to be common sense.
I think that the introduction of the idea of intention would be very difficult in actual practice, but I think it is perfectly possible that there should be added to the definition the phrase which was used in a judgment cited by the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot), the famous Ulysses judgment, in which the judge talked about the "dominant effect" of the work. I do not think it would be impracticable to use that criterion here. I think that it would be much more practicable than to introduce the question of intention, and I think, equally fair, as it would judge the work as a whole. It would judge it in the way which a number of my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite had in mind when they talked about the evidence of expert or impartial, or literary witnesses.
I suggest to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it would be reasonable to consider whether that phrase, or something similar to it in substance, cannot be introduced in Clause 1. I do not agree with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) about the Hicklin judgment. I think that is purely a debating point. The Hicklin judgment has been known for a long time to be restrictive and unsatisfactory, and my hon. Friend says that this Bill repeats some of its phraseology.
When we have a judgment like the Hicklin judgment on which the criticism is known to be, and understood to be, on certain points, and we repeat the phraseology of that judgment and restrict its application to various points which are relevant in this Clause, then it is irrelevant whether the words of the Hicklin judgment are used or not. We might just as well use the words of the Declaration of Independence or anything else. That seems to me to be a quite irrelevant point.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: I do not follow the argument of my hon. Friend. I understood him to accept the point that the Hicklin judgment in a wider sense was unsatisfactory in a great number of ways. If that is so, he must agree with me that it is undesirable to apply its essence to a new field.

Mr. MacPherson: That is not exactly the argument which my hon. Friend put. I would certainly agree with him if he had put it in that way. It is, of course, undesirable to apply its essence to a new Bill. What he said was that its phraseology was used, but its phraseology is used here with so much hedging around that the essence of that judgment is not contained in this Bill.
I conclude on the question of definition by suggesting that, even though I support the Bill, I am not quite satisfied that the critics of the definition have not something in their favour. We do not want to see this Measure applied in the future to classes of publication other than the ones with which we are now dealing, and I do not feel completely satisfied that it cannot be so applied. I would, therefore, join with those hon. Members who have asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman to look again at the definition.
The other general line of criticism has been on the score that the Bill does not deal with the law of obscenity in general; that it deals only with one particular part of it. That is not a matter about which we need seriously worry. This is definitely, openly and specifically an ad hoc Bill. It is a piece of what someone once called "ad hockery," and there is no objection in principle to "ad hockery."
There is no reason why we should not deal with one particular corner of the wider general field. In fact, at the moment, there is a very strong reason why we should pick out this particular section of the field, and do what we can about it. While one can sympathise with the desire of lawyers, of publishers, and of intellectuals, or of almost anyone, in fact, to have a properly worked out, complete blueprint of the law of obscenity, there has, on the other hand, to be considered not simply those people who would like to see that done, but the people at the other end who have to do the job—that is to say, us.
It has always been a habit of this House never to have been afraid of tackling a thing empirically! We have always said that it does not matter tremendously whether we are covering the full ground and having a complete blue print of everything. It may be a good thing to deal specifically with something that is

troublesome at the moment and in particular places. That, I think, is all the justification which is needed for the ad hoc nature of this Bill.
It is always easy, of course, to argue against something because it does not do something else. One is familiar with the Communist heckler at the back of the hall, who, after one has made a convincing and persuasive speech on the subject, say, of transport, gets up and says, "The speaker has spoken for half-an-hour and never once mentioned Chiang Kai-shek." There is a similarity between the two types of argument.
It is easy to come along and say, "I object to this Bill because it does not do something which I should like it to do." That is quite a different thing from saying that what it actually does is wrong. While, therefore, I have some sympathy with what seems to me to be the first line of criticism of this Bill, namely, that the definition needs tightening, I have very little sympathy with the other line of criticism, that we should not take this action unless we are prepared to legislate over the whole field. I agree that legislation over the whole field is desirable, but I do not think that that should hold up this Bill.
I have one or two matters to raise rather more briefly. An ordinary ignorant layman like myself did not understand the legal effect of the use in Clause 4 of the word "prohibited." It was helpful to have it explained by the Home Secretary; but will the Lord Advocate, when replying, let us know whether the Bill will prohibit the importation and sale of these publications to men of other Forces? There are men of the United States Forces stationed here, and in the course of the general discussion of this question over the last few months there have been a certain number of arguments connected with them. It would be helpful to know the position there.
I should also like to ask the Lord Advocate—we from North of the Border are very glad to find that he is to reply for the Government tonight—the legal position in Scotland. The law there is quite different from that of England. I understand that the most important relevant Statute is the Burgh Police Act, 1892, but I am told that there may be other local Acts. To know that is just about enough to frighten a layman from


any further research. Perhaps the Lord Advocate would make the position clear.
I strongly agree with those critics of the Bill who said that prosecutions should be guided through one channel—the Director of Public Prosecutions. In Scotland there is no Director of Public Prosecutions. If such an Amendment was added to the Bill what would happen in Scotland? It would be desirable to apply the principle in Scotland. Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman will explain what would be involved by such a change.
This is legislation on a particularly difficult subject. We are in the very serious dilemma of, on the one hand trying to prohibit what most people would agree to be an evil, and, on the other, trying to avoid those restrictions upon ordinary freedom as to matters of the mind, self-expression, and so on, which can be so easily imposed by this kind of legislation. I think that the Government have done a reasonably good job in their attempt to find a solution, but I do think that with regard to satisfying publishers and others as to just how the law will apply there is need for a little further thought.

6.44 p.m.

Mr. Norman Cole: I have listened carefully to the debate, and a number of interesting and very valuable comments have undoubtedly been made in the course of it which will need consideration at a later stage. I am concerned primarily today with preventing the further publication and dissemination of these horror comics. So that there may be no doubt about my feelings towards the Bill, I want now to thank the Home Secretary both for bringing it forward and for bringing it before us today for Second Reading.
It has been said that we might have waited for legislation of a broader nature; legislation which would deal with a whole number of harmful types of publications which should be prohibited. As my right hon. and gallant Friend has said, the consideration of those broader issues may well take some time and I—and I think others—am not prepared to wait that time. Even though the Bill is only part of a much larger problem I would rather have it before us today than have to wait. It is possible that when

that larger problem is dealt with by broader legislation we may wish to incorporate into it what is in this Bill.
In this day, in an enlightened country, it is incredible that it should be necessary to have to consider such legislation at all, or that such comics should even exist. That they do exist, and have exerted, and can exert, considerable harm upon our children and young persons, there can be no doubt. I hope that the hon. Member for Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) will not mind my disagreeing with him in one particular. He cast doubt upon the effect which such publications might have upon the minds of children and young persons. I have no doubt about their deleterious effect, and even if I had some doubt I should not like to take such a risk.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: I did not, of course, assert that they did not affect the mind. I said that this was a field in which we knew very little and that it was necessary to move with caution. I am, of course, interested to hear the point of view of the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole), but I should be a good deal more convinced rather than interested if, instead of asserting, he could bring forward some evidence to support what he says.

Mr. Cole: The hon. Member is very kind. I did not say that he asserted but that he cast some doubt. It is very difficult to prove that the commission of some crime by a juvenile delinquent is caused by his having read a particular comic the previous week.
It has been said that the influence of the home and parents should preserve children from harm. I have three children, but I should not be prepared to take the risk of saying, "Let them have these comics. I know that they are so well brought up that such publications will have no effect upon them." In that respect I refer to the hon. Member who said that he felt that children should be allowed far more ability to be robust on this matter. Did he really think—and I am sorry that he is not in his place—that a child up to 13 or 14 years of age has the necessary maturity or experience to form judgments of right or wrong, and what is or is not to be done?
It is the duty of parents, of teachers, and of all those in the capacity of guardians, to guide children until they


are of an age when they are capable of forming their own judgment. We do not find a person under 18 years of age responsible for a capital crime in that if such a person commits murder he is not executed. How then can we regard a child up to 18 as being in full possession of judgment faculties?
It is astonishing that these publications should be called "comics." It is an amazing colloquialism; they are neither comical nor funny. It might be as well to find a better term which would more accurately describe them. One particularly insidious point about these comics—and one which I believe is borne in mind by those publishing them—is that they are in pictures. They do not require even the effort of reading. In other words, the maximum results of emotion are obtained with the minimum effort. The House should be wary of such things which do not require even the effort of reading.
Much reference has been made to intention. We are in danger of exaggerating that point in the matter. Since printing was first established, there have probably been very few people who have ever deliberately published a book designed explicitly to corrupt some particular person or class of persons. If we tried to prove that, we should, in many cases, be following a very difficult path. I prefer the definition which my right hon. and gallant Friend gave—that the reasonable results of a man's action and what flows from the action might be regarded as the intention. I think that is a much better way in which to regard the question of intention.
Other hon. Members have referred to what might be the effect of the Bill in a few years' time. One hon. Member suggested that we ought to put a time limit on it. I am entirely out of sympathy with that point of view. If, in five or 10 or 25 years' time, there should be any kind of publication as harmful and as deleterious as we consider these comics to be today, then, be it now or be it in 25 years' time, such publications should be prohibited. I see no reason why we should have a different standard of values in five years' time. Indeed, for all we know, we may much need a prohibition of this kind in five or 10 years' time, and we may be doing good service in that respect by passing the Bill.
Another point I wish to raise is one which I will not press in detail, because I appreciate that it is a Committee point, but to which I hope the Home Secretary will give his kind consideration. I have in mind the fact that we are today starting legislation in this matter, and we have, therefore, to be careful that the legislation is as complete and comprehensive as we can make it. In other words, in some ways we are more vulnerable because we are commencing legislation than we should be if we did not pass legislation on the subject. If we leave a gap in the Bill, we are inviting clever people to drive a horse and cart through it, and to carry on with certain publications.

Mr. Ellis Smith: With the assistance of the lawyers.

Mr. Cole: I draw my right hon. and gallant Friend's attention to a point which has been touched on many times, but not in this connection. In the definition in Clause 1 we read the words, on line 6, "wholly or mainly." I am not quite clear about what effect flows from "wholly or mainly." What happens, for instance, if a clever publisher, making the money which can be made from the publication of these comics, decides to fill 40 pages of a magazine, 15 of them with exactly the same type of material as that which we have now, and 25 of them with some other kind of material—simple material, which he knows the buyer will not read?
The magazine will still sell. We all know that many a publication is bought by some people because some portion is attractive to them, while the remainder of the publication is ignored. To have 15 pages out of a total of 40 pages would not be considered to come within "wholly or mainly" and therefore would not come within the requirements of the Bill. The publisher, the distributor, and anyone else involved, would be outside the letter of the law because the case did not fall within the words "wholly or mainly."
The next portion of the definition is in line 12—
in such a way that the work as a whole …
The intention of that is not at all clear. I am well aware of, and am in sympathy with, my right hon. and gallant Friend's desire not to frame the Bill in such a way as to leave no freedom and to restrict


every kind of legitimate publication. But the phrase in line 12 is,
in such a way that the work as a whole would tend to corrupt a child or young person …
Why should we look only at the "work as a whole" in considering its tendency to corrupt?
Consider the example which I quoted. Is it not possible for a child to be equally corrupted by 15 pages out of 40 as by 15 out of 15, as is the case at present? The subtlety escapes me. I well believe that if someone had sufficient resource he could publish the same comics as those which we have at present, provided that he doubled their size and filled the remainder with innocuous material in order to cover the requirements of the Bill.
I shall not press the point further except to make the suggestion that for the words
which consists wholly or mainly of stories,
I would substitute, quite simply—the simpler the better—the words "which includes stories told in pictures." I would emphasise the word "includes."

Mr. G. M. Thomson: The hon. Gentleman is proposing a much wider definition than is given in the Bill. I understand his motives, but would he tell me whether he is entirely satisfied that the kind of wider definition which he proposes would not bring within its ambit perfectly bona fide children's periodicals of a robust nature but which are publications with a very long tradition in this country?

Mr. Cole: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. That point had occurred to me, and I gave it much thought because I would not wish to do that.
I have some knowledge of children's publications, having three children. But let me direct the hon. Gentleman's attention to page 1, line 12, of the Bill—
that the work as a whole would tend to corrupt.
I believe that no hon. Member would wish any publication to be in his house at any time if even a small part of it tended to corrupt the mind of the children. I think line 12 answers the hon. Gentleman.
I suggest, for consideration in Committee, in page 1, line 6, the phrase, "which includes stories told in pictures." In line 12, instead of,
in such a way that the work as a whole,
I suggest merely, "in such a way that the stories would tend to corrupt." Here I emphasise the word "stories." Another virtue I could claim is that that would reduce the number of words in the Bill.
I want to conclude on a matter regarding parents and teachers. There are those people who say that parents and teachers have the entire responsibility for all these matters, that nobody else should interfere, that if parents and teachers do not do the job it is just too bad, and that if the children suffer as a consequence, we must accept it. There is another school of thought which says that, while parents and teachers have responsibility, the State must all the time watch the interests of the children and leave the minimum amount of responsibility to teachers and parents.
In my opinion, the Bill has the best of all possible worlds. I believe that it gives assistance to parents and teachers, who have a responsibility in these matters. I also believe that parents and teachers have a pretty difficult job—the larger the family the more difficult it is—in carrying out their responsibilities as they would wish, and that this Bill and similar legislation will help them a great deal in their duties. I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading and that, with any necessary Amendments made at later stages, the Bill will pass into law and do its work.

6.59 p.m.

Miss Margaret Herbison: It is evident from the debate so far that some hon. Members have strong views in support of the Bill and others have just as strong views against it. This subject is causing concern, not only in this country, but, I understand, in many other lands. Friends of mine have from time to time sent me a literary magazine published in Australia, and in the news notes of one of these magazines I find that in Queensland, a State in Australia, the Literature Board of Review has already banned a number of comics featuring war, crime, and sexy-illustrated stories. In another edition of that magazine, I find the information that the Police


Offences (Obscene Publications) Act, 1954, is now on the Statute Book of Victoria.
A great many fears have been expressed today that if we pass the Bill we shall be doing something very dreadful against the freedom of certain people in this country. We have to examine that contention very carefully indeed because it is of the greatest importance that we in this House should do everything we can to be zealous for the freedom of the individual in this country. I make that point at the beginning of my speech because I am in full support of the Bill.
I want to read a little from a publication because reference has been made to pictures by Hogarth, references have been made by the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. R. Bell) to volumes he had to read when he was a student, and references have been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot) as to what might have happened if in the past we had had such legislation as is proposed today. There is a very interesting statement in this publication which deals with some of the points made today.
It begins by quoting a statement made by J. B. Priestley in the "New Statesman and Nation," in July last year. He said:
Nine youngsters out of ten will sooner or later discover sex for themselves, even if their favourite hero is not always being voluptuously entangled.
The writer of the article, who had been dealing with horror comics, went on to say:
But this cruel violence is something else. It is by no means an essential part of us. No doubt there is in us the germ of it, a spark of savagery, especially in youth. One of the aims of civilisation is to smother that spark,—
he went on to say—
to provide an environment in which that germ cannot flourish and multiply. But here in this popular fiction the whole civilised trend is being carefully reversed. It is more than a question of manners. There is much of our early fiction—in Fielding and Smollett for example—a lot of rough and tumble, knock-about brutality, as much a reflection of its time as Hogarth's pictures were. But this new violence, with its sadistic overtones, is quite different. It is not simply coarse, brutal from a want of refinement and nerves, but genuinely corrupt, fundamentally unhealthy and evil.
I think that statement from this magazine on literature sums up very well the feelings of those on both sides of the House today who support the Bill.
A great deal has been said of the responsibility of parents and teachers. I do not think we can stress their responsibility sufficiently, even in a debate of this kind. But no matter how responsible parents or teachers are, if this literature is on sale, children will get it. They will get it without the knowledge of their parents and teachers. Although I believe in the responsibility of parents and teachers, I feel that if, as Members of Parliament, we find there is something which is going to attack the very best for which we believe civilisation should stand, we have a right to try to ensure that it shall not continue.
When the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South was dealing with the point about responsibility of parents, an hon. Member intervened, and the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South said he could scarcely think of any orphan who did not have someone who was responsible for him. I can think of some children who are not orphans but whose parents do not exercise the responsibility which they ought to exercise in this field. As Members of Parliament, we ought to be very careful and just as zealous in working for the good of those children as we are in safeguarding the freedoms in which we believe so much.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) that it is not only young children who are affected by horror comics and that type of publication. I have heard from friends in the Forces that the main reading matter of many young Service men is this type of publication, which can do so much harm. We have to protect the children both of responsible and irresponsible parents.
We also have to protect those who sometimes are mentally retarded and on whom this type of literature can have a much more evil effect than on the more highly intelligent young people, adolescents, and Service boys. Because of that, and because of my experience as a teacher, I feel we must not only take a negative attitude but from this House we must send out a message to parents, teachers, and publishers that they have a duty to provide something which will take the place of this shocking literature which we oppose.
Although I am not a parent, I have nephews and nieces in whom I am most


interested. They have most responsible parents, who not only see that they have books to read which will interest them, but also that they have many interests as well as reading. Their time is very fully occupied on what one might call good pursuits. That does not mean that the children are kept away from the rough and tumble of life. The children about whom I am speaking have a very great deal of freedom, but it is freedom that is watched carefully by their parents, and does not lead to licence of any kind.
The same sense of responsibility applies to teachers. I know that at present they are overburdened by huge classes. One of my nephews, who is six years of age, has, from the time he was five, been in a class of 50 children. It is very difficult for any teacher teaching a class of that size to attempt to give the children all the guidance in this matter that she could give if she had a much smaller number of children to teach. Although I support this negative Bill, I say to the Scottish Office, the Home Department, and the Ministry of Education, that if they really want the very best for our children they must look at the question of the size of classes.
I know that many publishers have been attempting to do very good work indeed in the provision of more suitable reading matter for young people, but I do not think that we or they have gone sufficiently far in our attempts. I hope that publishers will now seize the opportunity which this negative Bill gives to them, when it abolishes the horrible type of literature, to put on the market in its place literature that will appeal to young people.
It is not the literature of soft stories and the like for which I am asking. Boys especially want adventure, and we should see that if they want it they get it in a clean way and not as something that is besmirched in the manner in which it is in the publications that we are trying to get rid of.
During the Committee stage, various points may well need to be made, and Amendments may be necessary and, I hope, in some instances will be accepted. The main purpose of the Bill, however, is a good one. It will give protection to our children so that they can develop spiritually, mentally, and physically as all decent civilised people would like them

to develop. It is for that purpose that I support the Bill.

7.12 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel H. M. Hyde: I have listened with great interest and attention to the speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison). As she herself indicated, she is particularly well qualified by virtue of her knowledge of education and of the teaching profession to appreciate and understand the needs of children in regard to literary matter. I most wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Lady that the Bill in general is necessary for the protection of the children. I would, however, approach the subject in a rather different manner, because there are grounds for one or two criticisms of the Bill.
A number of the speeches to which we have listened have concentrated on the criticism that the law of obscene libel should be altered so as to include the so-called horror comics. That view was put forward eloquently by the hon. Member for Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) and it was put forward with some effect by the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot), and it is a view with which I have some sympathy.
Reference was made to the committee sponsored by the Society of Authors and presided over by Sir Alan Herbert which produced a draft Bill for the reform of the law of obscene libel. I regret that that draft Bill was not used and brought forward to incorporate the purposes of the present Bill. But be that as it may, we must be content with what we have got, and although I regard the Bill as to some extent a patchwork way of dealing with the whole problem, nevertheless it pinpoints an obvious evil which should be remedied.
I do not think it would be wrong to say that the Bill is due to the arousing of the public conscience. It is due to some extent to a public agitation about the subject. I agree with one of my hon. Friends who suggested that the term "horror comics" is perhaps a misnomer. I have taken the opportunity of looking at some of them, and to my mind, anyhow, there is not very much that is comic about any of them.
The subject was raised as long ago as an Adjournment debate on 1st August, 1952, when these publications were referred to as "American style comics."


That is not, perhaps, a satisfactory definition, but the fact remains that these publications were first introduced to this country by American troops during the last war and the majority have originated in the United States of America. Today, about 100,000 copies of these objectionable magazines are printed each month in America depicting every form of sadism, violence, horror and crime. Hon. Members will have seen the selections from these publications which were on view to the public towards the end of last year at the headquarters of the National Union of Teachers in London.
When I went to look at them, they made a most disturbing impression on my mind, particularly as those examples had been sent in by teachers who had discovered their children reading them. There were half naked girls tied to chairs and being threatened with burning pokers, and eyes being gouged out by ghouls and werewolves. There was "the incredible story of a man who was born five years after his mother died" and, "other chilling, weird, spine-tingling" themes. These are random examples of this literary fare.
Typical titles were "The Vault of Horror," to which the right hon. and learned Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice) has already referred, "Tales from the Crypt," "The Corpse Lived" and "Skeleton Hand." Besides violence, there was marked emphasis on the idea of putrefaction and decay. I took the opportunity of writing down a descriptive passage which accompanied the horrible drawings of a shocking story entitled "Born in the Grave":
Then, one night in the damp heat a strange activity takes place at the lonely grave. Dirt is flying! The mound is moving! A foul stench pervades the air. Loud groans break the silence. Voices can be heard. A deep-throated chuckle and then the cry of an infant.
In an adjacent crime series, I noticed that there were frequent beatings, killings and other forms of torture depicted in gruesome detail. It is true that in many of these the gangster usually gets liquidated in the end, but not so far as I could judge because he is wicked, but because he is not a good enough gangster. In one so-called comic magazine, for instance, there were 137 separate pictures of successful crimes as against nine of retribution and justice.
"The Search"—this is the title of one of them—opened with a picture of a policeman being shot in the guts, and it closed with one of the criminals being accidentally boiled alive in a water tank. The cover of that magazine depicted a successful prison escape. In another called "Thrill-crazed Killer," the scene on the jacket showed an enormous blonde standing over a man whom she had just felled with a blow. He remarks, no doubt with good reason, "Phew! I feel like I been run over by a truck," to which the Amazon replies, "You haven't been yet. But if you want to keep yourself from being put through a meat grinder, you had better pony up all the dough!"
What is to be done about this revolting mass of literature? The Bill attempts to solve the problem. I do not think anyone in the House would not wish to see this type of literature suppressed because of its character.
However, what has been concerning me is that, in our desire to achieve that object, we do not attach other forms of literature to this prohibition and so bring them unfairly into the context of the Measure. Though I agree that the object of the Bill is very commendable in itself, I have some doubts as to whether the Bill is altogether satisfactory in its present form. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have referred to the definition in Clause 1, and I am somewhat concerned that it may be rather too widely drawn. It seems to me that, on its present construction, it could be construed to cover things like well-known collections of nursery rhymes if they are pictorially presented.
We have already heard references to Hogarth's pictures. Another work which, I think, would be covered by Clause 1 is the collection of Beardsley's illustrations to Oscar Wilde's "Salome." Beardsley drew between 30 and 40 pictures to illustrate that work. Only a little more than half were used by the original publishers. After the publication of the work Beardsley got another publisher to produce all the illustrations, simply with letterpress at the bottom describing each picture. If one follows them from No. 1 to—I think it is—35, one can get the whole story of "Salome" in pictorial form, but those pictures certainly depict acts of violence, of cruelty, if not incidents of a rather horrible nature. This work can be readily procured today. The question is whether that is a work of art.


Those pictures are, of course, most skilfully drawn, but they may fall within the definition of Clause 1.
"The Times" in its leading article this morning went so far as to say that the Bill might be used to cover a nursery rhyme like "Three Blind Mice." It said:
There is a body of well intentioned people genuinely convinced that 'Three Blind Mice' and similar favourites are so gruesome that they do serious damage to the infant mind. To enact a Bill like this would be to tempt enthusiasts to misuse it. Laws live on long after their original intention has become unnecessary or forgotten, but they are sometimes then used as convenient instruments for quite different purposes.
"The Times" might have given the example, but it did not, of the obvious case that has already been mentioned by the hon. Member for Stechford, the Obscene Publications Act, 1857, Lord Campbell's Act, under which many prosecutions for the possession of allegedly obscene material have taken place. Yet Lord Campbell himself, when he spoke about the Measure in another place, made it very clear that it was intended
—to apply exclusively to works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth.
Of course, that Act has been used for much wider purposes, and what Lord Campbell said has not prevented its implementation for those wider purposes.
In other parts of the Commonwealth legislation has already been introduced to deal with this subject, for instance, in Canada. When this problem was discussed in the debate of 1st August, 1952, the Joint Under-Secretary of State, from whom, I hope, we shall hear later in this debate, had this to say about it. I quote his words because they have put me in somewhat of a quandary. This is what he said:
It is true, of course, that attempts have been made in other countries … to deal with this matter by statute. In particular, there is a Canadian statute, which bans
'Any magazine, periodical or book which exclusively or substantially comprises matter depicting pictorially the commission of crime, real or fictitious.'
Presumably, that is the best definition that the Canadian Legislature has been able to devise to deal with this subject. I think it will be immediately obvious to hon. Members that, if there was such an Act on the Statute Book here, it would be quite inapplicable to

deal with what we are now considering. If I remember rightly,
'Tom, Tom, the Piper's son,
Stole a pig and away he ran,'
and any child's book which had a picture of Tom and the pig would, by statute, be obscene if we tried to implement such an Act here.
Personally I should be very distressed to know that a book of nursery rhymes depicting Tom committing the offence of the larceny of one pig could form the subject of proceedings under Clause 1, which specifically relates to magazines and books pictorially depicting the commission of crimes. On the construction of the Clause, as I understand it, it seems that it could. If it cannot, I should very much like to hear from my hon. Friend, if, as I hope, he speaks later in the debate, what the explanation is.
We have heard also today the criticism that the Bill constitutes a threat to the liberty of publishers and printers and retailers. There is some substance in the fear, in spite of the fact that the Home Secretary has gone some way, in his opening speech, to allay it. We cannot get away from the fact, which the hon. Member for Stechford brought out very strongly, that the Bill proposes to enshrine, though in a somewhat restricted content, the test of obscenity in literature which was laid down by Lord Chief Justice Cockburn in 1868; in other words, the "tendency to corrupt" principle, which, to my mind, is far too rigid and speculative a test because it completely disregards the state of mind of the accused.
That brings us back to the conception of intent. Should not the state of mind of the accused person be considered? Should the question of the degree of recklessness which he exercised in dealing with the matter not be a necessary ingredient in the offence? Personally I think it should. I think, too, that it would be a retrograde step to create a new offence, and make it one, as the Bill in its present form does, of absolute liability. We must guard against the danger of a censorship being set up in effect.
Again I hope that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary will forgive me if I quote from his speech of 1st August, 1952. He said:
The real essence of the film censorship is the ultimate power to forbid children or others to go into a cinema. It is quite easy


to forbid a person to go into a building, whether it be a cinema or a public-house, but it is entirely different to forbid the sale of particular articles. I think that hon. Members will see on reflection that if one once starts to forbid the sale of particular articles as classified, one would at once have to have something like a licensing system for news-vendors and bookshops which would mean being two-thirds of the way on the road towards a general censorship of literature."—[Official Report, 1st August, 1952; Vol. 504, c. 2035–6.]
I should like to know if—

Mrs. Alice Cullen: On a point of order. I wonder if the hon. and gallant Member is reading a horror comic to us.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. and gallant Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde) has read a good deal to us, but, of course, it is in order to read excerpts from books and even to consult one's notes from time to time.

Lieut.-Colonel Hyde: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was not attempting to read a horror comic, though I gave an example from one earlier in my speech. My last quotation was not designed to fall within that category.
I was about to ask how my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary reconciles that statement with Clause 2 of the Bill, which forbids the sale of particular articles as classified and lays down specific penalties for these new offences.
There are only two other matters which I would like to mention. First, we have heard that there is a right for a defendant to go for trial before a jury, but that is not expressly laid down in the Bill. Would it not be desirable to make clear on the face of the Bill that a defendant has the right to choose between trial by a magistrate at a court of summary jurisdiction and trial before a jury.

Mr. Ede: When he is charged at petty sessions, the clerk to the petty sessions will inform him that he has a right to be tried either by the court before which he is appearing or by the court of quarter sessions. He will certainly know that he has the right to go before a jury.

Lieut.-Colonel Hyde: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. I am very glad to hear that, but the point is not made clear in Clause 3.
Secondly, we are told that the Bill does not apply to Northern Ireland, except in so far as Clause 4 by implication brings in the right of the Customs to seize objectionable articles which it is intended to import. It has been suggested that not only should the articles be seized but that the importer should be liable to penalties. If that is to be the case, the rather curious situation will arise in Northern Ireland of the importer becoming liable to penalty, whereas, assuming that the Northern Ireland Parliament does not pass similar legislation, anyone who exposes for sale or distributes the objectionable material will not be proceeded against.
Subject to these observations. I welcome the Bill in its main objectives. Although I may have something to say in Committee about its provisions, I am very glad indeed to see it brought forward tonight.

7.37 p.m.

Mr. John Rankin: As a result of the sins of the hon. and gallant Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde) I stand as a vicarious sacrifice. I hope that my speech will not equal in length the speech to which we have just listened.
The Bill has received today a scrutiny which is usually reserved for the Committee stage. I should imagine that to some extent that betokens the interest which the Bill has aroused in the House. I should like to carry that scrutiny a stage further on my own behalf, merely for an introductory moment or two, by asking whether the Home Secretary, or whoever replies to the debate, will say something about Clause 2. That Clause threatens penalties to an individual who sells one of these magazines but exempts altogether the author or the artist.
It is an important point, because, it is possible for a person to sell a magazine without necessarily knowing its contents. We cannot assume that a person who owns a shop reads or goes through every publication that he sells, but under the Bill he will be charged and may be found to be the guilty person, whereas the artist and the author, who most certainly know what is being published or printed, are entirely exempted from the provisions of Clause 2.
Clause 4 refers to
The importation of—
(a) any work to which this Act applies; …
The Home Secretary will remember that before the Bill was introduced a point was made with regard to American Forces in this country. I have in my possession copies of publications which were brought into this country by the American Forces. Are these to be regarded as having been imported? If they are so regarded, because in the terminological sense they are being imported, will they be banned under the provisions of the Bill?
The point is important. During the period before the introduction of the Bill, when we were putting Questions on the subject in the House, I was in touch with the British editor of "News-Week." He conducted an inquiry here about these periodicals from that American aspect. He came to the conclusion that a large proportion of those in circulation in Great Britain came into the country through the medium of the American Forces. Will they be covered by Clause 4? That is all I want to say on what might be called Committee points.
I want to direct attention to the fact that the Bill was introduced by the Home Secretary at the urgent desire of hon. Members on both sides of the House. The scope of the Bill, which has been widely criticised, is definitely limited to matters which the House, during the period before the Recess, claimed ought to be dealt with. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman will remember that many of us raised the question of horror comics. I put Questions myself, as did many of my hon. Friends and hon. Gentlemen opposite, and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede).
I agree that my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) raised the issue of obscenity. There was a little attempt to broaden the issue, but it can be claimed that the attitude of the House as expressed at Question time was that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman should do something about the horror comic, and do it as quickly as possible. He has done that. Because of that, and without in any way seeking to defend him, I would say that it has been a little ungracious to broaden the scope of discussion to matters with

which the House more or less said that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman need not necessarily deal. He has met what was the general demand.
I want to consider the issue from a point of view which so far has not commended itself, or been presented, to the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) said that there had been a good deal of fear expressed on our side of the House that the Bill interfered with freedom. The Bill deals with children and, in my view, it is preserving the right of the child to grow up without having its mind deprived of the freedom that it ought to have—the freedom from pollution. That is an important consideration.
These periodicals, of which I have an ample number here, are not merely horror comics. They do not deal merely with the horror aspect of life; they deal with something much more fundamental. They make a more damaging attack than that, because the young child is not greatly influenced by this horror aspect. I think that it shakes it off very quickly. These periodicals pollute the mind of the child.
They divide human society into two classes. First, there are the whites. One need only look at them to see the ladies, glamourous and half naked, and the men with all the physical attributes of the finest specimens in humanity. These are the whites. Of course, one cannot talk of every publication, and I am discussing the periodicals as a whole. The evil people are invariably those who are coloured.
In other words, these magazines identify evil with colour—either the colour of the skin or the colour of an idea. They imprison the mind of the young. They act as propagandist journals to spread an idea that all the good things, all the virtues, physical and mental, belong to one colour in the human society, and all the evil things are mated with those who are coloured differently from the race to which we belong.
That is a wrong thing to do. It is propaganda influencing the mind of the young along lines which every one of us deplores, as one knows from speeches which are made regularly in this House calling for the development of the underdeveloped parts of the world. We want to raise the standards of these people. We do not want to train our young to look


upon them as necessarily associated in any way with evil ideas.
But these magazines go a stage beyond that, because wherever we have evil they show that it has to be hunted down. The type of justice that is vindicated is not the type of justice for which this House stands. It is not the type of justice that we believe in. It is summary justice, executed on the spot and often of the most brutal and sadistic nature. That is the evil in these journals. In that way they imprison the tender growing minds of the young. I hope that the Bill will be received with complete approval from both sides of the House, because it seeks to free the mind of our youth from these evil influences.
I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) is no longer present. I told him when he spoke that if I was fortunate enough to be called I should deal with one of his comments. He said that it was difficult to say how the young mind reacted to the horror comic. I do not guarantee to quote his exact words, but I am not wrong when I say that that was the idea behind them—that we could not gauge the effects of the horror comic on the young mind. Generally that is true. We cannot say that because "this" has happened "that" will be the result. Nevertheless, one can give many examples. My hon. Friend the Member for Gorbals (Mrs. Cullen) mentioned one which, to some extent, promoted the earlier Questions on this subject.
Last September a school in the Gorbals division of Glasgow closed for the day. By some system of bush telegraph, no one knows how, and as the children poured out of school, the word went round like wildfire that there was a vampire in a nearby cemetery; that this vampire had iron teeth and had eaten two young children. With that prattle, there went talk of space ships and men from Mars, and all the time there was talk about a monster. The "monster" had gripped the minds of the children, and so they armed themselves with sticks and stones and anything they could obtain, because they were out on a great mission—to destroy evil, to destroy the monster.
That is always a good thing, so we are told, although in Scotland, we must remember, there are good monsters and

bad monsters. In the north of Scotland we have a loch called Loch Ness. It is inhabited by a monster, and anybody who said anything bad against the Loch Ness monster would find himself in great danger——

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): I do not think that this Bill is directed against the Loch Ness monster.

Mr. Rankin: That is the very point I am making.
That is just what I am about to say, because our monster is a "verrey parfait gentil" creature indeed. She keeps out of the way all winter and only surfaces during the tourist season. She is a very thoughtful monster. Of course, the Loch Ness monster is a lady. We like her so much that we call her "Nessie" and no lady—not even the bearded lady—could ever be a really successful monster.
But we can see how the children from that school had their minds gripped by this idea, and how easily the idea spread and their impulses were directed to a particular end. The police found exceeding difficulty in controlling these children, which is an added reason why I hope that this Bill will receive unanimous support in the House, because its object is entirely worthy.
I believe that it is an attempt to free the minds of our children from evil influences. By this Bill we seek to keep their minds from being poisoned. Just as we would refuse to put poison on the breakfast table or the dinner table to be put into the bodies of our children, so I hope that tonight we shall refuse to instil poison into their minds.

7.53 p.m.

Mr. Niall Macpherson: We would all agree with the hon. Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) that my right hon. and gallant Friend has been under considerable pressure about this matter. We would all agree also about the desirability of the objective, but it is still for this House to examine the method. I agree broadly with my right hon. and gallant Friend on the question of method. The object, of course is quite clear. It is to protect children from having their minds corrupted by certain pictorial publications, and we all agree with that.
Some say that this is a matter for the parents. But will not parents be roused more to a sense of their responsibility if


horror comics are banned by law? I suggest that they will. It is a matter not only for the parents, but also for us, for we all recognise that children and young persons must be protected from certain influences and practices with which they will have to contend as adults without that protection.
My right hon. and gallant Friend used an analogy when he said that we have already recognised that children must be protected against making certain purchases. But I suggest that there is no proper analogy here with the purchase of cigarettes or alcohol and so forth. In this case the Bill makes the printing and publishing of horror comics, as well as the selling or hiring of them, an offence; whereas we do not make the production of cigarettes by the Imperial Tobacco Co. or any other organisation an offence. Nor do we make it an offence for the tobacconists to sell them, except to children. I have not heard of tobacconists who lend cigarettes.
The difficulty about this Bill is that it seeks to suppress
any book, magazine or other like work which consists wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures
and it goes on to define them. It seeks to suppress them all if they would corrupt a child or young person "in any other way whatsoever." I hope that my right hon. Friend will deal with these words "in any other way whatsoever" because it is in those words that I feel it to be the sense of the House that there is a certain amount of misgiving.
This Bill will not suppress certain things for children only, as in the case of cigarettes or alcohol; it will suppress them for everyone. Having said that, I would add that I am not sure that some of the fears and misgivings which have been expressed are not exaggerated. After all, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson), dealing with his own edition of "Pinocchio," made it clear that that was a story told in words; whereas the essence of this Bill is that it deals with stories told in pictures, and therefore there is a strong distinction and the line is drawn pretty clearly.
It may be found to be drawn too widely. I do not know, for example, what will

be the fate of the girls of "St. Trinian's" under the provisions of this Bill. It may also be drawn so widely as to affect other publications, but if they are already well established and have humour which distinguishes them from the baleful aspects of the horror comics—as so many have said, the latter are not comics at all but pure horror—they will escape this Bill. I hope we may be assured that that is so.
I wonder if my right hon. and learned Friend will also deal with the definition contained in the Bill. There is a danger that much more may escape than is intended. It may be that, once the Bill becomes an Act, attempts may be made to evade the effects of it. As I read the Bill, if less than half of the space in a publication is devoted to stories in pictures, the publication escapes. Again, if all the stories told in pictures do not tend to corrupt, as I read the Bill, the publication escapes. It may be that the terms of the Bill are drawn too narrowly in that respect. That is a matter which we shall have to examine in Committee.
My main point is that it is quite impossible to foresee how the Bill will work in practice. It may be that horror comics are a passing phase, and that the Bill will achieve its object within a few years. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. R. Bell) that it would be wise to place in the Bill a time limit, so that it would come up for examination periodically in the House of Commons, and it would then be for the Government to justify its retention under the Expiring Laws Continuance Act. I believe that to be a reasonable course, in view of the fact that we may be dealing with only a temporary and passing phase. We may also find that the Bill has quite a different effect to that which we expected.
There is also the danger that the Bill may be used later for purposes other than those for which it is intended. It is very difficult to foresee these things, and I hope that my right hon. and gallant Friend will say that during the Committee stage he will at least be prepared to give consideration to some kind of Amendment which would limit the duration of the Bill. With that safeguard, I feel that the whole House ought to welcome the Bill and give it a unanimous Second Reading.

8.2 p.m.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: I am sure that the House is gratified to see the Home Secretary back in his place. I hope that he did not retire earlier because he was disappointed with the reception which the Bill then seemed to be receiving. I am sure that he has discovered that a warm reception has since been given to it. In the main, the opposition has come from the fraternity of authors, and even they seem to stress most of all the fact that the Bill does not deal with something other than that with which it purports to deal, namely, the law of obscene publications. With great respect to this fraternity, that is entirely beside the point as a criticism of the Bill. I hope that it will receive a Second Reading; not that there are not some criticisms which should be made at a later stage.
About two or three months ago I travelled for a fairly long journey in a train from Norfolk with four very young airmen. I hope that nothing I am about to say will be interpreted as a criticism only of persons from another country, because these horror comics have been circulated among the people of more than one country, including our own. These four young airmen, all in their late teens as far as I could tell, had been brought up in a country where horror comics have an even wider circulation than here, and during the entire time taken in travelling from Norfolk to London these men were looking at each other, wide-eyed, as each in turn related the happenings recorded in the latest horror comic at which he had been looking. As far as I could tell only four subjects were touched upon, and these, with deadly monotony, kept coming out. They were killing, robbery, rape and some of the other more squalid forms of sexual intercourse. During the whole time from Norfolk to London these four otherwise splendid young men talked of nothing else. I thought then that if that was the end product of horror comics we certainly ought to try to do something about them.
Several hon. Members have very modestly disclaimed any capacity to connect the commission of delinquencies with the reading of horror comics. I am with them in that. How can we possibly connect the two things together with any certainty? But can anyone claim any good for the horror comics? In my sub-

mission nothing good can be claimed for them. Some of us may have a suspicion—and in the absence of any good that is enough—that there is a connection between the reading of horror comics and the delinquency which has unfortunately been prevalent since the war. It has not by any means been caused only by horror comics, but in the minds of some of us it seems quite possible that such reading can be connected with the delinquencies which have been indulged in.
I know that many people are alarmed at the possibility that recognised works of literature may come within the mesh of the Bill. Even "The Times" this morning was canvassing the possibility that Struwwelpeter might come within the mischief of the Bill. I hesitate to put my own opinion before that of the leading article writer of "The Times," but it seems extremely improbable that such a document, although containing a certain amount of violence, such as the cutting off of thumbs, could be said to come within the mischief of the Bill, because it is not wholly or mainly devoted to violence.
I have very little fear that genuine works of art will come within the scope of the Bill, though I was shaken a little by the instance given just now by the hon. and gallant Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde), a distinguished author, in relation to the illustrations to a work by Oscar Wilde which had been taken out of their context and published simply as a work of illustrations without the original text. It may be that they told a story, mainly in pictures, which dealt with violence and therefore might be thought to come within the Bill. If that is the case I should not hesitate to take the risk of allowing the work to come within the mischief of the Bill, because I believe that we must do something to protect our children from some of the worst assaults in respect of which they are liable to be left entirely unprotected in the world at present.
We grown-ups should not be unduly pompous and didactic about what children think, because their minds work in such a different way from ours. I remember a child who was very backward in learning to speak and was nearly 10 years old before she uttered a word; but one day at the table she suddenly turned to her parents and said—and these were her


first words, remember—"Let me see"—in the most cultivated voice—"the Brown's are separated, are they not?" That showed what had been going on in the mind of this young child, possibly for years, and it suddenly came out. I remember my own daughter coming back from riding in the country and announcing that our great friend, A.B., was lying dead in the road, and that somebody had covered him up with a blanket. She did not seem to be at all upset by the presence of death.
Yet, if we take away their feeling of security—even by removing their pet cat or canary—we may do children irreparable harm. We must be careful about the degree to which we lay down the law. I do not think that any of us has much doubt that children are subjected to all sorts of corrupting influences. It certainly seems that they will be even more when commercial television begins to operate. There are other corrupting influences besides horror comics, but because we do not deal with them all in this Bill—and many of them are already dealt with; films are subject to censorship—there is no reason for not giving this Bill a Second Reading.
In case there may be an infringement of liberty, or it should be found that when the Bill becomes an Act it operates in a way which was not intended, I support the plea that a time limit should be incorporated, permitting the Act to lapse unless the Government of the day does something about it, after, say ten years. It is not that with the children of five or 10 years hence—or of whatever period the life of the statute is allowed to be—will be any less in need of protection than our present children from such things as these horror comics, if they then exist. That is not the point at all. The hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) seemed to think that that was the point which was argued by those who wanted provision for the Bill to last for only a certain number of years to be incorporated in it.
The whole point is that fears have been expressed—for my part, I would say quite sincerely and genuinely—by many people who do not want the Bill, that it might not operate in the way in which most of us want it to operate. Very well, cannot

we put something into the Bill in order to meet them which would prevent the Bill from becoming a permanency until it has been tried out? We want the Bill to be as good as it possibly can be, because a jerry built statute is no use at all. We do not want to have another Obscene Publications Act placed on the Statute Book, adding, so to speak, to the legislative slum that is already to be found there. We want some proper building done here, and, in my submission, this would be a much better Bill if it incorporated a provision such as the one I have just suggested, allowing for the lapse of the Bill if, after say 10 or five years, if the Government of the day does not come forward urging that the Act to be continued.
There is one other point. I hope the Government will consider very seriously that prosecutions under this Bill should not be undertaken unless by the Director of Public Prosecutions. It seems to me that, if we are to have uniformity in the practice under this Act, this is the best practical way of achieving it. But if there is to be prosecution by individuals, we shall have all sorts of different results from different cases. We may even have different results from different cases when the Director of Public Prosecutions is responsible for launching the prosecutions, but, at least, there will be much less chance of that. If these two, and perhaps some other provisions in order to make the wording more certain and easier to understand are inserted in this Bill during the Committee stage, it will be a good Bill.
I believe that it will be a good Bill, because I think it will protect our children from something from which we should all want to protect them. It is only a question of method—of what is the best way. I think the Government have made a courageous effort and have chosen the best way, and I support them in it.

8.13 p.m.

Mrs. Eirene White: We have had a lengthy debate on this Bill, possibly longer than the Government expected, but I think that is really because the Home Secretary has failed to anticipate the views of many people on both sides of the House about the difficulties of dealing with this admittedly complex matter.
I entirely agree with those who say that the Bill deals with something different in many respects from the matters dealt with in the law dealing with obscenity, but the Home Secretary was very well aware that there has been great concern over that branch of the law, and I should have thought that he might have forestalled much of the criticism which has been expressed on both sides of the House today had he tried to meet points which cognate experience in other branches of the law have shown to be desirable.
It seems to me that in the Bill he has avoided dealing with all the difficulties brought to his attention in another connection except one, and that is precisely the wrong one to put into this Bill. He has put into this Bill the point about dealing with a work as a whole, which, of course, is a very important matter when dealing with books. One of the objections to the present law is that it is possible to take isolated passages and bring a case, whereas it is only proper to consider a work as a whole and not abstract one or two passages of a doubtful nature. When we are dealing with horror comics, precisely the opposite applies. There, it is so easy to find something utterly objectionable and yet separate in itself in a publication which may include a number of other stories whether in picture form or not.
Therefore, I must say that I think the Home Secretary has been less than skilful in the presentation of the Bill, and in dealing with the points which have been mentioned on both sides of the House. I think many of us feel very strongly that it is quite unsatisfactory to legislate in this difficult matter in any way that would prevent a lack of uniformity, so far as that can possibly be achieved, because it is most unfair to the publisher, the retailer, and the author—who, incidentally, does not appear to be mentioned at all in the Bill. I think it would have been better to have made it perfectly clear that the author is intended to be included amongst the others, because that again is one of the points which has been so difficult in the law dealing with obscene publications.
There are so many difficulties of detail that the House will certainly spend a good deal of time on them in Committee. I am not a lawyer, and I do not want to go over the question of intent again, but

it is perfectly clear that, taking the Bill as it stands, various publications could be included if some officious person wanted to make trouble. "Struwwelpeter" has been mentioned, and I suggest that a fully illustrated edition of Hilaire Belloc's "Rhymes" might come within the definition of Clause 1, as well as a completely different sort of publication.
For example, I can think of a booklet published, I think, by the Kenya Government on Mau Mau atrocities, which would come precisely within the definition of a story told primarily in pictures—
being stories portraying—

(a) the commission of crimes; or
(b) acts of violence or cruelty; or
(c) incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature;"
which, if it happened to fall into the hands of a child or young person, might very well have a corrupting mental effect. This booklet showed pictures of mutilated cattle and human beings, and yet the book might have been—and, in fact, was—produced for a very proper purpose, which we fully recognise. I mention that instance, concerning pictures of Mau Mau, in order to show how careful one has to be in trying to draft a Bill of this sort, because one would always have to think of the possibility, under the procedure suggested in the Bill, of some mischievous or officious person trying to take action, when we could not necessarily rely on the good sense even of our magistrates in this matter.
Having said that, I should like to express sympathy with the main object of the Bill. I am very glad that we have had public opinion aroused on this matter. I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to the National Union of Teachers, and I am also glad that we have got the Bill early enough to direct public attention to it.
Whatever one may think of the methods adopted in the Bill, we should prevent a strong vested economic interest growing up, which is one of the main difficulties in the United States. I have before me a copy of "The Bookseller," in the current number of which there are quotations from a book about to be published in this country but already published in the United States by a Dr. Werthman, in which he points out the tremendous economic forces which are by now interested in these publications


in the United States. He gives some horrifying figures, from which I understand that the number of so-called comics published in the United States is round about 90 million a month, a far higher figure than that suggested by the hon. and gallant Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde).
Dr. Werthman referred to the economic power of large industry, and in his researches into the matter he learned that the number of comic books was so enormous that the paper pulp interests are vitally interested in their mass production. He found that he was fighting "not windmills, but paper mills," and we certainly do not want anything of that kind to happen here. With the general intention of avoiding anything of that sort, we are in the completest sympathy. It is merely the machinery of the business that concerns those who are critical.
I wish we could have had a rather wider debate on this matter and a rather less legalistic one. Some of my hon. Friends have mentioned what one might call a more positive approach. I am sorry that the educational intervention from the Government Front Bench was confined to one sentence from the Minister of Education. While this matter must be dealt with from the legal point of view if we can manage to find a reasonable way of doing it, the main thing which troubles many of us is that people would not read these horrible productions if they had other and better interests. The Minister shakes his head. I grant at once that there is a very small minority of people who are, for some reason or other, perverted and who, whatever one did, would probably turn to something of this kind. The great majority of young people would not turn to these particular horrible productions if during their early years at home and at school they had found some other interest in life.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) mentioned the subject of classes in schools being too large. That is important. In large classes it is precisely the child who finds it most difficult to keep up who does not find it easy to read and to whom the genuine pleasures of reading are very often denied. That difficulty becomes much more serious as the children reach adolescence and early manhood.
I had experience many years ago as a librarian in the United States, where I found that much more attention was given than is the case here to helping people to use libraries and the printed material there. Many people who have not had the advantages of a home in which books and the more serious periodicals are a matter of course find it very difficult to deal with the printed word. That is why they turn to these pictorial things, which are so much easier for them.
Here is a genuine problem of adult education as well as of the education of children which needs very considerable resources if it is to be dealt with properly, in libraries and among the young men in the Forces. I do not want to go too wide, so I will not pursue that subject, but we cannot seriously dismiss the matter of the horror comic without indicating that we are least aware that there are other problems of defects in education which we ought to tackle.
I hope that on some other occasion we may have a very much fuller statement from the Minister of Education. He mentioned today that he is asking his inspectors to look into the question of libraries in schools, but he did not say whether further financial provision would be made for this very necessary work. We ought to have further information on that point. In the current number of the "Schoolmaster" is a very interesting article on horror comics and the position of the schoolteacher in relation to them. The writer points out that the majority of primary schools have no funds for the setting up of libraries and that many of them struggle along on voluntary funds. That is one of the positive things which could be looked at. I remember a teacher in my constituency making the very same point and saying that one school of nearly 500 children had only £40 a year for library books and equipment, including rebinding. which is very expensive.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I hope that the hon. Lady will not go too far, as she herself has pointed out.

Mrs. White: I thought it was only right, when discussing a matter of great social import as well as legal interest, that we should be allowed to mention some of the positive points, particularly as the Minister of Education intervened


on this very matter when you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, were not in the Chair. Unless we tackle the matter on the positive side whatever we may do in the restrictive legal sense is not likely to bring about the results which all of us wish to see.
Therefore, my welcome to the Bill is rather mixed. Many of us are sceptical as to how far the Bill will be effective, although we have full sympathy with its aims. I repeat that I wish the Home Secretary had found it possible to take into account many of the points to which his attention has been drawn, and that he had embodied them more successfully in the Bill.

8.26 p.m.

Mr. Somerville Hastings: Few of the hon. Members who have taken part in the debate have thrown any doubt on the potential danger of horror comics. The only question has been as to the machinery of the Bill for dealing with them. The Bill is a bold attempt to deal with this admitted evil.
Some who have spoken against the Bill, and notably the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. R. Bell), seemed to make the point that small and irregular doses of poison injected into the youthful mind might not be particularly harmful and might result in the development of a stronger and more robust character. I remember when, some seven or eight years ago, we were discussing a Bill for providing milk free from the germs of tuberculosis, that the same argument was brought up. It was suggested that it might be good if children took tuberculous milk so that some sort of immunity could be developed. Fortunately, the House of Commons did not listen to any such nonsense.
My only excuse for intervening in the debate is that for the last six years I have been chairman of the management committee of a large remand home for boys, and that I have tried to understand what has been going on in their minds. As far as I can see, all children, and particularly delinquent children, love comics. They love comics because they are easy to understand without the trouble of reading, which many children find difficult. I did myself for many years when I was a child. What happens is that these children scan over their comics looking at the

pictures first, and then go back and read the letterpress, if any.
I have asked a good many of these delinquent boys what sort of comics they like best. Almost invariably, they have said that they prefer the American horror comics. I would not put too much store on this because boys in remand homes are apt to say whatever they think will please, and because they are not a fair cross-section of the child population. They are, in many cases, children who are backward in their education, and to a large extent they are not children of the highest mental capacity. But all children like comics, and they like them because the child has a visual mind.
A doctor friend of mine who has two daughters asked them, when they had reached the age of discretion, what their reactions were when she had reproved them as children. They said that they never listened to a word she said, but they looked at her face, and if she seemed grieved they felt sorry. Children have visual minds. They pay much more attention to what they see than to what they hear.
I believe that children like these American comics, these horror comics, as they are called, for several reasons. First, they appeal to their primitive emotions of hate, revenge, and killing. Those are primitive emotions in all of us. Then they are attracted by the new world of imagination which these comics give them. Children are attracted to space ships and death-ray pistols, and they like playing with them, for the same reason. I think that another reason why children like these horror comics is that they are supposed to depict the doings of adults, which are to children, to some extent, a closed book.
I agree with this Bill, and I think that we should do all that we can to prevent horror comics reaching children. I agree with the Bill for three reasons. First, I am convinced that hero worship and imitation are tremendous factors in children. I could give innumerable examples of that. They project themselves into the scenes of which they see pictures.
A short time ago, a research was carried out in Glasgow with regard to delinquent children, and it was found that 44 per cent. of them had in their household or family people who had got into


difficulty with the police. Other areas showed much the same, although perhaps not quite so high a proportion. I think that another objection to these horror comics is that they tend to blunt the finer feelings. They show that there is much brutality even when good overcomes evil.
I suggest that there is a third objection, which I do not think has been sufficiently stressed in the debate tonight. That is that these horror comics are terribly frightening to children. Children do not wear their hearts on their sleeves. One does not know what a child is thinking, but in young minds the pictures or incidents depicted often have a very profound effect. I remember that when I was a very small boy I was given a copy of "Pilgrim's Progress." I remember a picture in that copy until this day. It was a picture of Apollyon. I did not say anything to anyone about it, but I could not prevent myself from looking at it, and it frightened me very much. I do not think that this is good for children.
There are many terrible things in life which we are all bound to face sooner or later, and I feel that children ought not to face them too soon. I welcome the Bill, but I suggest that there will be difficulties as a result of American comics being sent to the troops over here, and being passed on to children.
American comics are not the only evils tending to corrupt children. I know what a strong factor the cinema is. When children in approved schools have been allowed to go home for a time they have come back to tell us that they have been to the cinema every night. It is the visual effect—it is the picture in the comic or in the cinema that has the strong effect on the child.
Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman who is reply to the debate say a word about what is not included in the Bill? The matter of Struwwelpeter has been dealt with, but what about our old friends Punch and Judy? I have seen many books for little children, with very little letterpress but with pictures of the life of Punch and Judy, starting with their throwing the baby out of the window, the hangman, the crocodile, and so on. If this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, will Punch and Judy become taboo, or will it be excused because it might be called a classic?
I should like to add my word of commendation about the Bill. It may have to be modified in certain ways in Committee, but it is a bold attempt to deal with an admitted evil.

8.37 p.m.

Mr. M. Follick: I wish from the outset to give my unqualified support to the Bill, and to give it without any criticism at all. There has been far too much exaggeration of possibilities here and of possibilities there, but we want to get rid of this filth that is getting into the minds of young people, penetrating their thoughts, and producing a set of almost indecent adolescents.
One can make all sorts of exaggerations. One can talk of Edgar Allen Poe, or even of the Merchant of Venice cutting out part of the body with a knife, or about the Woerz Exhibition in Brussels, which, despite its horrors, is one of the great things of the world. One can exaggerate to the very end, but I want to see an end of this horrible and dirty business. The job of the Home Secretary is to get rid of the stuff. How he does it, or what he does in doing it, is his business, and it is up to him to look after it.
Throughout my life, and I am 68 years of age——

Mr. Ede: Quite a boy.

Mr. Follick: Quite a boy, compared with my right hon. Friend—there has always been some sort of horror literature. I remember the old blood-and-thunders, and the penny dreadfuls. I used to read them and lie awake all night. We have always had them. We have always had the "Weary Willies" and the "Tired Tims" which are good fun—but always in our penny dreadfuls and blood-and-thunders and our melodramas there was the victory of the hero and the damnation of the villain. One does not get that in these comics. There is no idealism in them.
I am even more afraid for the adolescent than for the children—for the slow, tardy-reading adolescent who finds reading a burden. That is our danger, because there we have the youth becoming a man while his only way of getting enjoyment out of reading is when he can see the pictures.
As hon. Members know, I have been a language teacher and have had a great language institution, the largest in


Europe. We always taught languages by means of pictures—a picture with, below, it, an ascription. That was the way we taught the beginner—and the beginner might be as old as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede). That connection between picturised reading attracted the mind and kept the mind on the subject. It is even more important with young people, especially those young boys and girls who find it very difficult to read. I will not mention my scheme for reformed spelling, although spelling has a great deal to do with the problem.
Those are the people we have to look after and to try to protect. For that reason, I repeat that the Bill has my unqualified support, with no criticism whatever. Anybody can criticise. We can always find reasons for not doing something. I was given a reason the other day for which my Decimal Currency Bill could not be considered. We can always find reasons for not taking action. But let us get on with the job, wipe out this dirty nonsense, and find something good for these people to read. It can be illustrated for them if they like; there can be plenty of good reading with good illustrations. It is up to our publishers to find something for our youth which is worth reading, and to get rid of this stuff which is rotting their very minds.

8.43 p.m.

Mr. Barnett Janner: I rise because there should be some clarification of the question which is disturbing the minds of some hon. Members about the legal aspect of this Bill, as linked up with the ordinary purposes of the Bill. I have still to learn that the laws of the country have been made for any purpose other than to assist the community to compel wrongdoers to return to certain straight paths.
Although it is highly desirable that the whole community should be helped by publicity to understand the horrible significance of this kind of so-called literature which is falling into the hands of children and adults nevertheless I am of opinion that unless and until a Bill of this nature becomes an Act, it will be impossible to stem the tide of that kind of publication. It is all very well to talk about the difficulties which confront the draftsmen. I want to tell the Home Secretary that I am glad that he has reacted to public opinion in this way. It indicates at least

that he is making a definite attempt to deal with what is a terrible situation.
Reference has been made to the fact that large economic interests are involved, and, unless there were legislation, those economic interests would find ways and means to overcome any action which might be taken by the public to curb their activities which was not backed by some legal sanction. We have to face the fact that although it is difficult to cope with a situation of that kind without the possibility in some way or other of infringing upon the liberty of some innocent publisher, or the Press and so on, nevertheless those concerned will ultimately come to the conclusion that the Act will be a benefit rather than a disadvantage to them.
A very old Act contained a provision, which I believe is still operative, whereby the fiat of the Attorney-General has to be obtained before a prosecution may be instituted. It deals with a very similar subject to that which we are discussing—with the publication of obscenities and so on. The Home Secretary might possibly consider it advisable to see what has been the effect of that provision. I am not altogether sure that it is essential to have such a provision, nor that the Attorney-General would not under some circumstances refrain from taking proceedings when he ought to take them, but it is worth considering that matter.
The objection has been raised that magistrates may not be in a position to weigh up the exact significance of the powers that will lie in their hands if this Bill becomes law. I am not pessimistic about that. For many years I have seen magistrates of our country conducting their business. I do not say that they are by any means perfect, but they are very good, and, usually, a magistrates' clerk is available. And there certainly is public opinion in the locality which has a certain amount of influence upon the actions of magistrates if they tend to take wrong decisions. They know the district. I think it is wiser for the power to be placed in the hands of magistrates because this plague can be tested probably better by people living in a particular locality than it can be dealt with generally. The facts are known to parents, teachers and the community as a whole. The magistrates are not unaffected by information which comes to them in that way. In a case of this description local knowledge may be very good.


Where the horror comic is having a really bad influence, it may have the effect of making magistrates impose heavier penalties, and that would be all to the good.
I am not happy at any time about the question of entry to a person's home or business with powers of search, to which the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson) referred. It is a very serious matter. Warrants ought not to be issued except with the most careful scrutiny and with a large amount of real information being contained in the sworn evidence. On the other hand, I think that magistrates will exercise common sense in cases of that description. For example, they will not send officers into the business premises of reputable firms. They are not likely to send into such premises on flimsy evidence even if it is afforded under oath. But, of course, there is a difficulty which has to be very carefully watched.
One provision to which sufficient emphasis has not been given during the debate in Clause 4 of the Bill, which deals with the importation of these publications and is, in my opinion, one of the most vital parts of the Bill. The fact is that our community—and we can say it with considerable pride—is not the main factor in the production of these pernicious and sadistic documents.
According to the "Financial Times," 60 million comics of foreign origin were circulated in the United Kingdom in 1953, and an attempt was made to classify them into categories. According to the evidence of reliable people—the Authors' World Peace Appeal—approximately 20 per cent. of the publications were listed under the category of "no objection," 34 per cent. under "some objection," 33 per cent. under "objectionable" and 13 per cent. under "very objectionable." This last category, obviously, will not be allowed to be imported.
There may be difficulty in discerning what is objectionable but an error in the direction of preventing something which may not be objectionable from coming in is much better for us than an error which would allow objectionable muck to come into this country.
The figures are formidable. The publication of documents of this description to

the extent that I have indicated is of considerable concern to the community. It must be obvious to everyone in the House that this is a serious matter and it has been getting progressively worse. Anyone who has got hold of one of these documents or who visited the N.U.T. exhibition must have been appalled at the kind of literature that was being spread among both children and adults. It is true that the Bill makes it necessary to prove that the nature of the offence is such as is likely to contaminate the minds of the young, but I think it would be logical to ensure that that which can be proved to be a destruction to the minds of the young should also be prevented from coming into the hands of adults who might pass them on.
In towns where these things have been published, reputable publishers and printers have been appalled at the company which they have been compelled to keep, even if it has been only one small or minor firm. Leicester, for example, has a remarkable and well deserved reputation for printing throughout the world. It is one of the finest printing centres in the country and takes great pride in the work that it turns out. It is true that only one firm came to the outskirts and contaminated the scene. Everybody in the town, I think, wants to wipe people like that out of the way completely. We do not want that kind of thing coming into our constituencies or into our country.
I wish the Home Secretary strength to his arm. I hope he takes notice of what has been said today with a view to strengthening the Bill and that he will not relax in his determination to see that a Bill of this nature shall come on to the Statute Book as speedily as possible.

8.55 p.m.

Mr. Charles Royle: At this stage of the debate I shall not keep the House more than two or three minutes, but I want to give support to the Bill in a very general sense. I commence by accepting the fact that something must be done about these appalling and wretched publications. No hon. Member who took the trouble to view in the Library the exhibition of these publications would hesitate to say that some action is due on the part of the Home Secretary and that he must introduce some Measure to get these publications out of the way.
However, having said that, I want to speak as a magistrate who may be called upon to interpret the terms of the Measure. Clause 1, as it is drafted at the moment, is a magistrates' nightmare. It says first that the Bill applies to
… any book, magazine or other like work which consists wholly or mainly of stories told in pictures …
What is meant by "mainly"? Perhaps we may be told when the Government spokesman winds up the debate tonight. If there is a picture, for example, three inches by two inches, which is accompanied by a caption of 20 words occupying an inch by an inch and a half, is that "mainly" a story being told in picture form?
Secondly, the Clause says that a story to which the Clause applies is one that portrays
… the commission of crimes; or acts of violence or cruelty; or incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature …
Have magistrates, in hearing cases under the Measure, to stick to the crimes that we know in British law? Or may we allow our imaginations to run riot as to what we think are crimes? Questions of violence and cruelty have to be decided daily in the courts of this country. Cases of divorce and separation, even a caning by a headmaster in a school, may be regarded as cases of cruelty. I want to know whether magistrates, under the terms of the Bill, are expected to try the picture before trying the defendant.
Can we be told exactly what is a picture of "a repulsive or horrible" incident? As the House knows, I am a butcher. I envisage pictures coming before magistrates of incidents in a slaughterhouse. They would leave me unmoved, but I can think of a woman magistrate sitting next to me who would be completely horrified by pictures of that character being published for perusal by young people. They could easily make a colleague of mine sick, whereas they would not affect me in the slightest degree. That is the kind of thing that I am worried about, as it is affected by the present drafting of the Bill.
It is not many days ago that we were discussing in this House the Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment. I particularly remember some of the words of the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Hollis). I quote him:

I have no doubt that a large part of the morbid interest in murder … comes from the drama of the situation in that a man is on trial for his life. … I believe that this morbid fascination is likely to be enough to push the small number of psychopathic individuals just over the border, and placing a dramatic aura around murder is just the way to make murder more common."—[Official Report, 10th February, 1955; Vol. 536, c. 2109–10.]
Can we separate these two matters? Is the description of a horrible thing in words worse than the description of a horrible thing in pictures, or does it have less influence and less liability to tend to corrupt a young person?
I can only express the hope that in Committee we may find a better form of words for the Bill. If we fail to do that the only hope that I have is that the people who are responsible for these terrible publications will be scared off by this debate and by the fact that the Bill is on the Statute Book.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Ede: We have had a very interesting debate in which a large number of people have taken part. The emphasis in the debate has changed from time to time in a way that is quite worthy of the most exciting cricket match. I am quite sure that after the game had been going for about one and a half hours the Home Secretary must have been hoping that there would be some good bowlers coming along later on, after my hon. Friend the Member for Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot) had been knocking sixes, at any rate in their own minds.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) said that I had participated in the Questions which were put to the Home Secretary and which led to the introduction of this Measure. I only ask that he should give attention to the judgment which was given by Mr. Justice Stable in a certain case. I like to see the right hon. and gallant Gentleman in trouble, but at any rate on this occasion I did not lure him to the debatable ground on which he has stepped.
I share the apprehensions which are in the minds of most people, while at the same time I do not regard these publications as worthy of other than suppression. I want to make that point clear, but I cannot get out of my mind that this House passed, in 1798, a Bill to deal with the administration of oaths to the mutineers


at the Nore, and that the result of that Act was that in 1834 six Dorsetshire labourers were sent to transportation.
One has to be very careful, therefore, when one has before the House these Measures that make some indentation into personal liberty. One has to be quite sure that they cannot be used for other purposes than those intended. I welcome the suggestion which has been made by several hon. Members in the course of the debate that there should be a time limit in the Bill, a fairly long time limit of seven or 10 years, so that at the end of that time we can see what the effect has been and how the Measure has worked out.
At the moment, the Bill has achieved its purpose without getting on to the Statute Book because, as I understand it and as I have been informed by some people who have been watching this matter, publication has ceased. However, one publisher, at any rate, has intimated that if the Bill is not passed he will restart his operations. I hope, therefore, that after careful examination in Committee, the Bill will reach the Statute Book so that the moral reprobation of the House and of Parliament shall be given to the practice of publishing these awful documents.
I hope that all the points made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice) will be borne in mind when the right hon. and gallant Gentleman contemplates what he will have to do in Committee. I sincerely hope that a Bill that is so closely connected with the liberty of the subject and freedom of utterance will be taken on the Floor of the House, because constitutional Measures of this kind should not be relegated to Committee Rooms upstairs.
I was very gratified by the intervention of the Minister of Education, although I could have wished to have gone further than he did, because let us be quite certain that it is not enough to suppress these books unless we provide for the kind of child and young person who reads them something to take their place.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson) produced a book in the House. We have had a good deal

of advertising of constituencies and professions during the debate, which would never have been got over on the B.B.C. It was a very good-looking book and, after my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Follick) had instructed the hon. Gentleman, he was even able to pronounce the title of it correctly; a marvellous thing for a publisher. It appeared to me to be rather too expensive.

Mr. N. Nicolson: Five shillings.

Mr. Ede: Yes.

Mr. Nicolson: It is out of print.

Mr. Ede: Therefore, as a remedy, if it is out of print, it will not be much use.
I hope that if it is republished a cheaper edition will be available. One must realise that these books are bought out of the pocket money of children who, even in these days, have not too much to lay out on this kind of thing.
One of the defects of our education system which has a bearing on this subject, is the fact that the allowances for books in schools have rarely been raised over those of pre-war in anything like proportion to the rise in the cost of books. If we are to have school libraries and class libraries with books of the kind that will appeal to these children, a great deal of expenditure will have to be incurred. That is not true only of the State schools. I am a governor of a boarding school, the fees of which are nearly £300 a year—I am not advertising—butat the last governors' meeting the headmaster reported to us that he was spending on books the same amount that he spent in 1938.
It is one of the facts we must face that a constructive effort to deal with the problem may mean some expenditure, certainly in State schools and probably in other schools, to enable us adequately to meet the problem. We all relish stories of adventure. I was brought up in a family with very strong Nonconformist traditions. The theatre was a thing forbidden. But we wanted adventure, and we obtained it through the dramatic reading of "Pilgrim's Progress."
I could read extracts from that book and even show illustrations from it which might bring a fully illustrated edition of "Pilgrim's Progress" dangerously near


the point covered by this Bill. And when we remember that it was written by a gaol-bird while he was in jail for defying the requirements of Parliament about the way in which he should worship God, it shows how easy it is to construct a case that, on occasion, sounds very plausible and yet makes a considerable infliction of injustice almost imperative. Never let us forget either that Socrates was put to death for corrupting youth. I mention these things because I wish to emphasise the fears that librarians must naturally have in approaching a thing of this kind.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stetchford dealt at some length with a Bill which we are not now discussing. We have had two Bills before the House, and during Second Reading debates that state of affairs is not unusual. There is the Bill which we have before us and the Bill which some of us would like to have, and, of course, it is so easy to talk about the second rather than the first.
I do not blame the right hon. and gallant Gentleman who was faced with a barrage of Questions about this matter every time he came near the head of the list at Question time, for deciding that he would deal with this, and not the bigger, subject. I am quite sure that were he to bring in a Bill dealing with the bigger subject the Lord Privy Seal would find some difficulty in fitting it into the legislative programme of any one Session. While I think that the law requires attention in that respect, I shall not do more tonight than to mention the fact that it has been raised by some of my hon. Friends.
I welcome wholeheartedly the courageous speech made at the time when it was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas). I think that he expressed the moral feeling of practically everyone in the country on this matter. We have to protect young people and children. There was one hon. Member who had been a parent for a fortnight who told us to "get off the grass" when it came to interfering with the way in which parents looked after their children. The hon. Member is not now present in the Chamber—he is probably baby-watching. But the curse of the matter is that there are too many children in this country who need our protection against the sloth and indifference of their parents.
We owe a duty to the rising generation. Our generation has placed enough burdens upon its shoulders, and we wish it to have the moral stamina to bear those burdens and to prove itself worthy of the heritage of liberty that our generation has preserved for it. We have, therefore, already taken steps under the Children Act—which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman administers—to deal with children who are in need of care and protection.
The best parents and the best teachers cannot always prevent the child from getting something that is offered for sale and which other children buy and talk about. Most of us have had secrets in our youth which we kept very sedulously from both parents and teachers—and we have sometimes been a little surprised to find, about 30 years afterwards, that they knew about them all the time. Probably everyone in the House had parents who were wise and understanding, but I hope that we shall not allow any false sentiment about the rights of parents or the duties of teachers to prevent this Parliament from putting its impress upon the discussion which has been going on.
I share the anxieties of the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christ-church about the powers of search given by the Bill. That point will have to receive very careful consideration during the Committee stage. I do not go so far as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner), who thought it almost beyond question that there are some publishers of such high repute that in no circumstances ought a search warrant to be applied for in respect for them.

Mr. Janner: I did not say that there were publishers of such high repute, but that I thought that when a search warrant was being applied for it might very well be that the magistrates, who knew the locality, would have that kind of thing in mind before venturing to issue a search warrant upon flimsy evidence. Those were the words I used.

Mr. Ede: I hope that no search warrant will be granted upon flimsy evidence at any time—but if the evidence is sufficient the action must begin and if, in the end, the accused is proved not to have been guilty of what was alleged, vindication will have been made in public.
My difficulty is that many of the hon. Members who have taken part in the debate left as soon as they made their contributions and I must, therefore, through the Official Report, apologise to them for referring to them in their absence. The hon. Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde) attacked somewhat vigorously the Joint Undersecretary of State for a speech which he made in 1952. I do not join in that attack. I think that this House itself, by the Questions which it directed to the Home Secretary, made it impossible for him to do other than go forward with a Bill to deal with this limited subject. If there were objections to the line that was indicated by the Questions, it would have been perfectly easy for hon. Members, by means of supplementary questions, to indicate that they were not in favour of any action being taken.
I am not quite sure what is the answer to the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) as to what is to happen when a publication of the kind which we have in mind has one grossly offensive picture, which may do all the moral damage that we deplore, while the rest of the pictures in the publication are quite unexceptionable. I would have thought myself that the line of argument adopted by my hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East, was quite unanswerable in those circumstances, and that that kind of publication differs very much from the other publications with which she contrasted it.
My hon. Friend was sceptical about the effect of the Bill, and I am bound to say that what has happened already should make us be quite certain that, as far as this limited objective is concerned, it will be effective. What we have to be careful about is that it is not so effective that it catches other things.
I would commend to the House the very wise speech, as I thought, of my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Mr. Hastings), and his observations about the way in which children have visual minds. I am not sure that we do not all have visual minds. I am quite sure that it is what people see rather than what they hear which makes the greatest impact on their minds. For instance, I am quite sure that the flaunting of extravagance does far more to promote

class war than any words that are ever used, and that is on an adult mind. I am quite certain that children learn more easily through the eye than they do through the ear, and I therefore welcome what was said by my hon. Friend.
My hon. Friend also said that the boys in the remand home said that they like comics, but he was sufficiently well acquainted with what goes on there to know that a boy tries to give the answer which he thinks will please the questioner, and today that is not an uncommon habit with children. I recollect a very angry school attendance officer once asking a small child in my class, "Did I not see you out yesterday when you were supposed to be at school?" The boy replied, "No, Sir." The school attendance officer, who was an ex-inspector of the Metropolitan Police, drew himself up to his full height and said, "Do you mean to say that I am a prevaricator?", and the boy, looking at him, gave what he thought was the expected answer, "Yes, Sir."
In recent years there has been a great deal of trying by a child to find the best excuse for being in the juvenile court. First it was the penny blood, then it was the cinema, and lately it has been the horror comic. I am not convinced that the case about the immediate impact on the child's mind of these documents has been made out, but I am certain that they get the child into an atmosphere where proper development becomes difficult and where children tend to worship the wrong type of hero, which is among the most damaging things that the child can do.
On behalf of my hon. and right hon. Friends, I desire to make it clear that here is an evil that has to be dealt with. We dislike censorship and anything that fetters the expression of legitimate public opinion. We are not inclined to use the word "legitimate" too narrowly, but there are some things which no civilised community ought to tolerate. The corruption of the mind of youth is one of those things.
During the Committee stage, we shall examine this Measure with great care. We wish the right hon. and gallant Gentleman well in his determination that this pollution of the minds of boys and girls, of lads and lasses, shall cease. While many suggestions have been made to make


the Bill safer, I think that the fiat of the Attorney-General ought to be given before a prosecution can be undertaken, so that we shall not get what the deputy chief constable in some remote borough thinks being set as a standard.
I hope that the law will be fearlessly administered, irrespective of the price of the book. In the past, it has too often been only the cheap book that has been punished. If anyone had tried to bring out the "Decameron" in fortnightly parts at 1s. a time, it would have been before the courts long before it got before the court at Swindon.
This law must be administered fearlessly and impartially. This is not an indication to the Attorney-General to be lax in the enforcement of the law, if it comes. We shall expect him, if responsibility is placed upon him, to use the powers that are given to see that this source of corruption of our youth is made impossible in the future.

9.29 p.m.

The Lord Advocate (Mr. W. R. Milligan): This extremely interesting and helpful debate has shown three things in regard to the attitude of the House. In the first place, the House has agreed that there is a traffic in publications of a highly undesirable type. Secondly, the House agrees that children have access to these publications and, thirdly, that these publications are harmful to children. From that point, however, the House diverges slightly. So far as one can gather from today's debate, there may be one or two Members who think that nothing should be done. There is another school of thought which says, "Wait for fuller legislation on obscenity in general." But I think the weight of the discussion has shown that the majority of Members are anxious that this Bill shall receive a Second Reading and be improved in Committee. That we would welcome.
I am not one who thinks that this Bill cannot be improved; of course, it can. I think there is only one Member in the House who thinks that, and that is the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Follick); but, flattered as we are, we would nevertheless like it to go to Committee.

Mr. Foot: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell the House now, because there have been appeals from many quarters that the Committee stage

should be taken on the Floor of the House, what he thinks about that?

The Lord Advocate: I think that it would be appropriate if that matter were dealt with later. [Hon. Members: "When?"] When I have concluded the main part of my speech I will deal with it. This Bill is of a type which no Government would lightly introduce, even as a part of children's legislation, and I would remind the House that this Bill is children's legislation. It is for the protection of children.
The reason that no Government would lightly introduce such legislation is that it interferes with the liberty of the subject. I agree entirely with all that has been said by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Neepsend (Sir F. Soskice) on that, and, further, that it does involve criminal proceedings.
It was thought at one time that legislation would not be necessary and that this obvious evil could be stamped out by parents and education authorities and by the realisation on the part of publishers and sellers that in this country literature of this kind just would not be tolerated. The position has improved, but we think that the improvement of the position, apart from the influence of parents and the education authorities, has largely been caused by the public warnings which have been given that legislation was to be introduced.
We shudder to think what would happen if legislation were delayed, or worse still, if legislation was not proceeded with at all. I am quite certain that there would be a resurgence of this literature and that we should have more of it than ever before. It is greatly to be hoped that the mere existence of a Measure such as this will act as a warning and that there will not have to be many legal proceedings. A deterrent, I think, it may well be.
May I now look at other provisions of the Bill and try to deal with some of the criticisms that have been raised? As the House will realise, a considerable amount of the criticism is of a kind which can be more fully developed in Committee. In doing so, I shall try to deal with any particular points that arise from the Scottish angle.

Mr. Foot: The right hon. and learned Gentleman keeps referring to the Committee stage of the Bill. It makes a great


deal of difference to what he is saying whether the Committee stage is to be taken on the Floor of the House or not. He is winding up for the Government. This question was put by my hon. and learned Friend who opened the debate for the Opposition and by other speakers as well as by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede). Surely we should be told whether the Committee stage is to be taken on the Floor of the House or not. That is one of the main questions put from this side of the House.

The Lord Advocate: I do not think that from the point of view of what I am saying at the moment it really matters whether the Committee stage is taken here or upstairs. That is a point which will be dealt with at a later stage.

Mr. Ede: If the right hon. and learned Gentleman continues speaking until 10 p.m., Mr. Speaker, and you then put the Question, unless the Government Whip moves, That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House, we shall not know what is the position. That is not a debateable Motion. Therefore, I think that it would be to the advantage of the House if we could be told, because I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman who is to move the necessary Motions on behalf of the Government at the end of the debate could say, through the right hon. and learned Gentleman, whether he intends to move that the Bill should go to a Committee of the whole House.

The Lord Advocate: One of the points dealt with was why——

Mr. Foot: Mr. Speaker, a question has been put from the Opposition Front Bench. That question has been put also during the debate. It was put six hours ago. We have seen the consultations taking place between the four Ministers on the Front Bench as to when an answer should be given. We have seen the Home Secretary consulting the Attorney-General, the Attorney-General consulting the Joint Under-Secretary, the Joint Under-Secretary has consulted the Home Secretary, and all have consulted the right hon. and learned Gentleman who is now addressing the House. Surely it would be an insult to the House if no answer is to be given by the Minister

now when winding up on behalf of the Government.

Mr. F. H. Hayman: His master's voice is not here.

The Lord Advocate: As I was saying a moment ago, one of the questions——

Mr. Royle: On a point of order. At the end of a Second Reading debate it is customary for a Government Whip in certain circumstances to move that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House. It would appear that on this side we are ignorant as to whether a Government Whip will move that Motion after the Bill has been read a Second time. Is it not possible for us to know in advance the Government's intention?

Mr. Speaker: The rule of the House is that unless there is a Motion to the effect that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House, it stands automatically committed to one of the Standing Committees, but the Motion to commit the Bill to a Committee of the whole House may be moved by any hon. Member. It is not necessarily a matter for the Government Whip; it is for the House and for the House alone to decide what shall be the destination, in Committee, of the Bill.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: You have just ruled, Mr. Speaker, that any one of us may move that this Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House. May I ask at what stage we may do that?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. and learned Member should know. It is as soon as the House has decided to give a Second Reading; immediately after the Second Reading has been decided.

The Lord Advocate: On the question of stories, to which I have referred——

Mr. Foot: Mr. Foot rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order.

The Lord Advocate: The question was raised whether stories should not also be included and why it was that it particularly referred to pictures. I think the answer really lies in this, that to the child, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Barking (Mr. Hastings)——

Mr. Foot: On a point of order. Can you tell us, Mr. Speaker, whether it is in order for a Member of the House of Commons to read his speech, particularly when replying to a debate of some six hours duration?

Mr. Speaker: I did not observe that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was reading his speech. It is quite common for hon. Members, when summing up a debate, to consult notes in order to refresh their memories as to what was said.

The Lord Advocate: The hon. Member for Barking pointed out—and at this stage the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot) will note that I am not reading—that it was very notable that children were more influenced by what they saw than by what they read. I do not think that children of the age we are now discussing would take the trouble to study documents of this kind if they had to read them. It is the particular fascination of the pictures that attracts them.
Another point raised and developed in the early stages by the hon. Member for Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) was that it was premature to bring in this Bill at a time when there was not ready a Bill for the consideration of the House dealing with the broader aspects of obscenity.
As was said by the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson), we are dealing with a very special evil, and where we have a special evil, I can see no objection to our dealing with it before we deal with the more general subjects. We do not delay the cure of measles until we have found a cure for smallpox. We have a definite evil here, and it is one which we feel should be stamped out at the earliest possible moment.

Mr. Kenneth Robinson: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will admit that these two are related subjects. Will not the Government give some assurance that a Bill to deal with the general question of obscenity will be introduced this Session, particularly in view of the Home Secretary's admission that the present law is unsatisfactory?

The Lord Advocate: I am not in a position to give any undertaking as to any particular time when any Bill dealing with

the general law of obscenity will be brought in.
I said I would deal with some of the Clauses. In opening, my right hon. and gallant Friend pointed out that Clause I is extremely narrowly drawn. It is aimed at one particular type of publication—the publication which today we have called, and which everybody in the country calls, the horror comic. It is designed to defeat the horror comic and the various descriptions in the Clause are intended to cover the horror comic.
Various questions were asked about whether "Reveille," "Forever Amber" or "Life" would be caught by this definition. I think that in many cases we should find that there were not a sufficient number of pictures and in other cases we should find that there was probably not the ability to corrupt.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson) asked what percentage of the pictures must corrupt. I think it would need to be a material percentage of the pictures, but that, again, is one of the points which can be thrashed out if and when the Bill goes to Committee.
Another point which my hon. Friend raised concerned the meaning of "in any way" at the end of one of the subsections. Of course "in any way" is governed by the word "corrupt," and it could be only in some way which would fall within the general definition of "corrupt." Some rather troublesome questions were asked by the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Royle) about the meaning of "mainly" and of "crime." "Mainly" is "substantial" in the text in which we find it, and "crime" would be read by magistrates as "crime known to the law of this country." Those were, I think, the main points raised on Clause 1.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman care to deal with the other point—whether the definition effectively safeguards existing bona fide children's periodicals in this country?

The Lord Advocate: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to get on, I will come to that point. I intended to deal with it.

Mr. Hastings: Before the right hon. and learned Gentleman leaves this point, would he give his views on Punch and Judy?

The Lord Advocate: I am sorry. I had Punch and Judy down in my notes but, having been warned about reading, I did not notice it. I do not think it probable that Punch and Judy, even in illustrated form, would fall within the Clause. It would depend, of course, on the method by which it was set out in pictures, but, on the whole, I think, the publisher, printer or seller would be safe, although one would want to see the form in which it was set out.
Reserving for a moment the point raised about ordinary children's comics, I come to Clause 2 which creates the offence. The point was raised by at least two hon. Members as to why the author should not also be included with "person who prints, publishes or sells," and, in this case, with the artist. There would be considerable difficulty in introducing the author because, as hon. Members will have realised, these volumes are composed of a series of stories and all might be—probably would be—written by several different authors. It would be impossible to say that one particular author has contributed to the work as a whole. We could not take one and say that he had committed an offence unless we could get the whole. The House will remember the words, "in the work as a whole."

Mr. Rankin: Different sellers.

The Lord Advocate: Different sellers, but all selling the same book in the case of the seller. There might be six authors each contributing to what, as a whole, was an offensive book.
The second point on this question is that in a great many cases they are anonymous. A third point is that in the vast majority of cases, I understand, they come from overseas—or rather stay over seas. In this connection hon. Members will realise that in Scotland there will be no jury and that it will be by summary proceeding——

Mr. Roy Jenkins: Surely the fact that the author might be overseas or anonymous and that that might make it difficult successfully to bring a case against an author is no argument for not including the author so that, if he wishes, he can offer a defence to the charge?

The Lord Advocate: I think it would be extremely difficult under Clause 2, in

view of the present terms of Clause 1, to bring in an author. I do not see how an author could be made liable for the unum quid as it were. It may be that the particular contribution he made did not corrupt but that in amalgamation with the contribution of his neighbouring author it did. That is the difficulty about an author, but I am perfectly prepared to consider whether an author could appropriately be brought in. In Scotland, it being a summary conviction, no question of a jury would arise.
There was some apprehension expressed by hon. Members in regard to the search which is provided for in Clause 3, but hon. Members will note that a warrant is not to be given until proceedings have been initiated. In Scotland, the proceedings being in the sheriff court, they would be initiated by the Crown, in other words, being in the sheriff court, they would be initiated under the direction of the Lord Advocate by the procurator fiscal.
As to the question of who should prosecute, that matter in relation to England will be considered before the Committee stage in the light of representations that have been made in this debate. So far as Scotland is concerned, that question does not arise because there is central prosecution under the Bill as at present framed.
The hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs asked what would happen if there was an alteration in the prosecution in regard to England, but I can assure him that I see no reason for any alteration in Scotland, our system of prosecution being different.
An interesting point was raised by two hon. Members on Clause 4 in regard to visiting foreign forces in this country. The position, as I understand it so far, is that the American Forces have undertaken that they will not allow into their N.A.A.F.I. these particularly objectionable and obnoxious publications. I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner), who said that this was an extremely important Clause. I do not think any points were raised on Clause 5, to which the ages of 15 and 17 apply.
During the debate, considerable discussion arose on the question of intention, which has always been a thorny point in all questions of obscenity; and as hon. Members will know, the courts


have sometimes appeared to differ, if courts can do such a thing, on the interpretation of the law of obscenity. We certainly will consider that point but it is an extremely difficult one. Our view was that in this case, dealing with this particular evil, we should adopt the obective standard which we have adopted. The test really is whether a publication tends to corrupt.
While, when questions of artistic or even literary merit arise, the intention might in certain circumstances be of importance, I do not think that anybody today has suggested that these publications contain any artistic or literary merit. As the right hon. and learned Member for Neepsend said—and I agree with him—they have no redeeming feature.

Mr. Foot: Since a large part of the argument has turned on whether it is possible to include this definition of intention in the Bill, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman deal with that matter and try to elaborate on the point as to why, according to the Home Secretary's view, it is impossible?

Sir F. Soskice: Before answering that question, will the Lord Advocate be so good as to include in his reply an answer to the following question? Does he accept or does he repudiate the statement made by his right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary that an accused person has only to deny that he had the guilty intent to be automatically believed and acquitted——

Major Lloyd-George: I did not say that.

Sir F. Soskice: —or does he think that that is completely mistaken?

The Lord Advocate: I do not think that my right hon. and gallant Friend said that the accused had automatically to be believed.

Sir F. Soskice: Yes, he did.

The Lord Advocate: He might or might not be believed was clearly what my right hon. and gallant Friend meant.
I should like to develop the question of intention. In a case of this kind, where we are trying to protect the child who is receiving this literature in circumstances which on no possible ground can be justified—there can be no argument in favour

of these things—the House would be well entitled to accept the objective view which we have taken, and the Clause should stand as it is today. But of course, it can be thrashed out in Committee in greater detail.
I hope the House will agree that the well-known type of publication popularly known as a horror comic is a horrible publication which we do not welcome in this country. It should never get into the hands of children and it is a publication which this House should desire to stop. We disapprove of this publication. Is this House to say that we cannot do anything about it? I invite the House to give the Bill a Second Reading and to improve it, if it can, when it reaches the Committee stage.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Kaberry.]

Committee Tomorrow.

RURAL WATER SUPPLIES AND SEWERAGE BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

9.55 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. W. F. Deedes): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The purpose of this small Bill is to change the form in which the Exchequer grants may be paid towards local authorities' expenditure on rural water supplies. Those grants are paid under the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Act, 1944. This is primarily an internal financial transaction, but I am aware that a great many hon. Members are extremely interested in these grants. They govern the speed at which we can bring piped water and sewerage to the rural areas still without them. I want, therefore, to try to relate the specific provisions of the Bill to the wider subject of these grants. I think that that may give the House a clearer picture.
Hon. Members will be aware that the Act of 1944, amended by the Act of 1951, authorised grants—of up to £45 million for England and Wales and of up to £20 million for Scotland—to rural localities to assist in water and sewerage schemes.


I think that perhaps I should summarise progress since the passing of the 1944 Act.
Of this total we have paid out £16 million in England and Wales. We have promised for schemes in progress £10 million in England and Wales, and we have promised for schemes in an advanced state of preparation, that is to say schemes approved in principle, £9·5 million in England and Wales. That makes a total of £35·5 million, leaving a balance unpledged, as it were, of £9·5 million of the original £45 million. For Scotland, the equivalent figures in these three categories are £5·5 million, £6·3 million, and £3·4 million, a total of £15·2 million of the total of £20 million.
In all, these grants have enabled us to complete schemes worth £22 million in England and Wales and £4·8 million in Scotland. We have in progress at this moment £61 million worth of work in England and Wales and £14·8 million worth in Scotland. I apologise to the House for giving so many statistics, but these are an important piece of background to the Bill.
I have said that we have paid or pledged a total of £35·5 million in England and Wales and £15·2 million in Scotland. That brings me to the point of the Bill. Normally these grants are being paid out each year by lump sums, and substantial lumps. Sometimes a single payment is made when the work is finished. In other cases payment is made as the work proceeds. It varies, but, of course, in every case it is capital which is paid, either in a lump or a series of payments. The intention of the Bill is that for future schemes payment will normally be made by a series of equal instalments, and those instalments will be paid half-yearly, and usually spread over 30 years.
In other words, this capital expenditure will, generally speaking, be amortised, and only very small grants will be paid by lump sum. By "very small" I mean about £1,000 or less. Where the grants have already been promised but not paid or paid in full when the Bill is in force, the balance will be paid by instalments.
The effect and advantage of this is to bring water supplies and sewerage in line with most of the other grant-aided services. Local authorities who undertake capital work normally finance it by

borrowing. They meet the cost by way of loan charges each year, and an Exchequer grant is usually paid annually or half-yearly as well. Housing and education are examples, and so are new towns, although those are not directly financed by the local authority.
In the case of water and sewerage we have made a practice of paying lump sums since the 1934 Act, which provided the first Exchequer grant for these services. Under that Act, not more than £1 million was provided for England, Wales and Scotland. In the financial year 1955–56, these grants, in a lump sum, would account for about £8 million, or £6 million for England and Wales and £2 million for Scotland. Now that they have reached this scale we feel that they should be dealt with on the same basis as most other grants.
The proposal comes forward now because the point was raised during a thorough review of Government expenditure which was carried out last year. If the Bill becomes law by the end of March, the change to instalments can take place at once. The amount to be included then in next year's Budget would be about £1·5 million. It means, of course, that in amortising the capital sum we entail a rate of interest. The ultimate cost, therefore, will be higher. It is difficult to give exact figures but, as the Financial and Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill points out, over 30 to 35 years the additional total may be about £19 million for England and Wales and £8½ million for Scotland.
Hon. Members may wish to know exactly how that works out. Perhaps a simple example may help. Out of the £45 million for England and Wales we have a balance outstanding at the end of the financial year of £27,600,000. On that—instead of capital payments—there will be half-yearly payments of principal and interest combined over 30 years. Half-yearly payments on £100 at 3¾ per cent. over 30 years amount to £2 15s. 9¾d., and the aggregate of such payments over 30 years is £167 8s. Therefore the increase is £67 8s. for every £100. It follows that on £27,600,000 it is £18,600,000.
Again, this arrangement will in no way alter the present basis for giving or determining the grant. I think that that should be stressed. No local authority


will receive less or more as a result of the Bill. The principle will remain exactly the same.

Commander J. W. Maitland: I am not clear whether the local authority is consulted. It may, and I am advised that it can conceivably be, the wish of the local authority to continue to have the grant in a lump sum. The Bill does not make it absolutely clear whether the local authority is consulted or not, or whether the Minister has absolute power and is the only person to determine what shall be done.

Mr. Deedes: I think that the Bill provides that sums may be paid by lump sum or by instalments. The point is that there are certain contracts for which it is convenient for a local authority to pay by instalments. Where those contracts exist, and where it is convenient, instalments may continue to be paid.

Commander Maitland: Therefore, the local authority will have a say in whether payment is by instalment or by lump sum.

Mr. Deedes: Payment will be made according to the contracts made.

Mr. George Brown: Clause 1 (2) of the Bill states that
… the said Minister or, as the case may be, the Secretary of State may, if he thinks fit, substitute for any payment or payments remaining to be paid …
these revenue payments. Therefore, it is not a question of whether it is convenient to the undertaking but a question of whether the Minister thinks fit. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has met the point put by his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Horncastle (Commander Maitland).

Mr. Deedes: The object here is to provide that where it is customary for the scheme to be paid for by a series of instalments it will be possible under the Bill to continue to do so. I think that meets the point.

Commander Maitland: What about new grants? I understand about grants made previously, but what about new enterprises?

Mr. Deedes: The new grants are covered. The local authority receiving this money may, where it is paying by instalments, receive the money by instalments.

Mr. Brown: It is not so.

Mr. Deedes: Perhaps this will become a little clearer as we proceed.

Mr. Brown: Well.

Mr. Deedes: I think it may.
The Act of 1944 allowed great flexibility in determining what the grant to each local authority should be. It is the intention that this amount should continue to be paid out in relation to the needs of a particular area. That is how we have always tried to implement it, and that is how we are going to implement it. The Bill makes no difference at all to that.
The Act of 1944 also provides that where the Government make a grant the county council should likewise make a grant. That will continue as before. The common arrangement is for the county council and the local district authority to share evenly between them the balance to be paid. That remains unchanged. It is also important to stress that this change to instalments will not reduce the size of the programme which can be undertaken.
I have said that the grants were authorised to a ceiling of £45 million for England and Wales and £20 million for Scotland. I have also explained that the grants by instalment will cost more, because the aggregate of instalments will be greater than the corresponding capital sum. This is rather an important point. Only the capital sum will continue to count against the permitted total of £45 million. This is the effect of Clause 1 (3), which also provides how the capital sum is to be calculated.
Hon. Members, certainly those representing rural areas, who have been patiently listening will really be concerned with one question only, apart from the explanation of the Bill: What effect will the Bill have on our progress towards furnishing all our rural areas with piped water and sewerage? In general terms, I can give an encouraging answer there.

Mr. Brown: No difference at all.

Mr. Deedes: For many years the progress in this respect was kept down by difficulties over labour and materials. These difficulties are no longer the cause of delay but, because of the taxpayers' stake, we have had to set some limit on the number of schemes which can begin


or claim grant in each financial year. That is the reason why we have to ask local authorities more often than we like, or more often than hon. Members on both sides of the House like, to be patient a little longer when they request us to authorise water and sewerage schemes which they urgently wish to begin.
One effect of the Bill will be to give us more flexibility in making financial arrangements with the local authorities. To that extent it should ease, not hinder, our progress. I am glad to say that our expenditure shows an upward curve. In 1953–54, the value of schemes attracting grant authorised for England and Wales was £12 million. In the current year the figure was £14 million for England and Wales, and in the next financial year, beginning 1st April this year, it will be £17 million. That is a higher total than in any previous year. We wish to maintain that progress, and in so far as this Bill assists us to do so, I commend it to the House.

10.10 p.m.

Mr. George Brown: The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government did a pretty good job. This Bill has nothing whatever to do with him or his Ministry. It has nothing to do with the business of providing rural water supplies or sewerage. This is a Bill designed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, so far as he can, wishes to cut immediate payments in what may well be either an Election year or a pre-Election year.
The Bill should have been moved by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who I see modestly sitting farther along the Government Front Bench. It has nothing to do with the wretched Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, who has done his best with a brief which he understood no more than we do. And why should he? Had he been capable of understanding his brief he would be the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and the hon. Gentleman who is the Financial Secretary would be the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.
The facts of the matter are that this Bill will not advance rural water supplies or rural sewerage by a foot. All it will do will be to increase the amount the

taxpayer will have to pay over the next 30 or 35 years for the same amount of rural water supplies. The increase in payments by the taxpayer amounts to £19½ million. But the Chancellor, who is anxious to get all the money he can in order to create an electoral climate, will have in hand what otherwise he would have had to pay out in lump sum payments. Those of us representing the taxpayer well know that the taxpayer will pay it all out in extra interest payments over the next 30 or 35 years.
The Parliamentary Secretary was plausible, attractive, and nice, but he could not hide the essential fact that the taxpayer and his children will now be forced to pay increased sums amounting to £19 million so that the Chancellor shall have a few mean, miserable pounds to hand out in tax reliefs this year. This is one of the nastiest, dirtiest, meanest little Bills—[Hon. Members: "Oh."]—yes, indeed, that the Treasury has ever forced upon another Department.
I have said before in this House that I have been not only a Minister, but a member of the Parliamentary Secretaries' union. Whenever a Parliamentary Secretary is put up by himself both to advocate a Bill and to answer the debate, we may be pretty sure that there is something rotten about the Measure, otherwise he would not be given the job. Were it something to boast about, the Minister would do it and not the Parliamentary Secretary. It is the same in all parties. This is something which has nothing to do with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and nothing to do with the provision of water supplies and sewerage. It is a mean little Measure by which the moneylenders in the City of London—[Hon. Members: "Oh."]—yes. One of the reasons why the South Norfolk by-election cut the Tory majority from 3,500 to 800 was that the hon. Gentlemen opposite who should represent rural interests do not do so. The Bill will make the taxpayers pay for what the rural areas are not going to get.
There are still far too many undertakings providing water and sewerage to our local authority areas. In Wales, Derbyshire and Staffordshire that is the fundamental problem, and the Bill does nothing to remedy it. It does not take the matter a step further from where we left it in the early 1940's. We have now had the joys, advantages and benefits of


a somewhat arrogant and somewhat cocky majority of Conservatives, who can be trusted to laugh whenever we discuss matters which are important in relation to the living conditions of ordinary people. They laugh scornfully; they are so much better than we are, and are quite prepared to say "Hear, near" to that proposition. They are so modest, in addition to their other qualities.
Having conferred upon us all these benefits and advantages, they do not take the fundamental question a single step further than we left it. The real problem to which the hon. Member should have directed his statement and did not—and I hope that he will deal with it in his second speech—is that when a local authority embarks upon a scheme it goes first to the Ministry and says, "Please, what grant will you give us?" As the hon. Member said, the major Act left a very great deal of flexibility with the Ministry. The local authority having gone to the Ministry, the Ministry argues about the matter for the devil of a long time.
There are two rural districts in my constituency—Repton and Belper—and they are pretty good, too. Neither is Socialist-controlled, so I am paying a sincere tribute to the party opposite. [Interruption.] I do beg hon. Members opposite to try to rise above this practising for the hustings. When they are in the House of Commons discussing the expenditure of £20 million of the tax papers' money, they might get out of the habit of trying out their speeches for the next hustings.
As I said, the two rural district councils in my constituency have a good record. I pay tribute to Conservatives when they are good, as well as to Socialists when they are good. I do not try to play party politics on every occassion. Perhaps that is why I was elected to represent a seat which for 22 years had returned a Conservative. Hon. Members opposite might think about that.
When a local authority asks the Ministry for a grant the Ministry argues about it for a long time and then makes a grant on the basis of the known costs when the local authority first thought about undertaking the scheme. The real problem is concerned not with this business of spreading the payment out over 30 or 35 years, but with the fact that the costs of the scheme tend to rise between the time when the local authority first

asks the Ministry for a grant and when it is able to get on with the job as a result of getting a firm grant from the Ministry and permission to proceed to tender.
If the hon. Gentleman is really concerned with saving the local authorities' money, we do not need this Bill. We want an assurance from him either that the Ministry will get on a lot quicker about deciding the proportion of the grant, so that the local authorities do not have to spend so much time in arguing, or that the Ministry will make this grant, when it is decided to make it, on the percentage applicable to the costs when the scheme is carried out and not to the costs when it is being thought about.
If the intention of this Administration—goodness knows whether that is the right word or not to apply to this lot—is to encourage more water and sewerage supplies, then they ought to address themselves to trying to make these grants apply to the costs of doing the work when it is undertaken. If I am wrong, let the Parliamentary Secretary say so, but I do not think I am; that is the problem which this Bill does not tackle one bit. That is the situation in which many local authorities find themselves under this Ministry and this Administration.
There are still far too many of our rural houses without a piped water supply. Do not let us run away with a silly idea of what that means. To us who mostly have to live in the towns—otherwise, we could not attend here—a piped water supply means water that comes through a pipe to a tap in the sink. I am told that, as far as Ministry statistics are concerned, a piped water supply means water that comes to a communal tap at the end of the lane. That is a piped water supply, according to the Ministry; so that to say, as I am told is the case, that 20 per cent. of the population in the rural areas is without a piped water supply means that 20 per cent. of the rural population is without water coming to the end of the lane to the communal tap. But how high, I ask the Parliamentary Secretary, is the percentage of rural houses without water coming into the house? It is much higher, and this is a very serious problem indeed.
We all talk about the drift from the land. Sometimes we exaggerate it; sometimes we talk about it when we all know that there has been a big increase in


mechanisation on the land, and that, therefore, we need fewer men. Even when we make allowances for all the qualifications, the fact remains that under this Government we are losing people from the land far faster than we can easily contemplate.
I happen to hold the view that it is not so much the question of wages that determines this question, not so much working conditions, but that living conditions in the countryside determine it far more than either wages or working conditions. If we want to get people working on the land, we have got to move towards giving them living and social conditions which approximate what they can get elsewhere. A woman will determine whether a man works on the land or not, far more than the man himself determines it.
This Government, if it desires to receive some cheers in the Election year or pre-Election year, really ought to set itself the task of finding out how to provide water and sewerage supplies in the rural areas quicker than we could do it. I repeat that the Bill does not attack the cause of the delay or address itself to the reason for the slow movement.
This is such a silly little Bill to bring to us. The Parliamentary Secretary knows as well as I do, because he represents a rural constituency as I do, that one of the problems is that, as the law now stands, we can only grant aid at a really high rate for a water supply to farm cottages provided that the supply is incidental to the farm supply. That means that the cottages for farm workers are incidental to the cowsheds for the cows. I find myself more busily occupied trying to work out ways and means of fitting water supply for cottages into water supply for the cows in order to get a Ministry of Agriculture grant than with anything else.
This is really fantastic. The Parliamentary Secretary might very well have ensured that his advisers directed their Bill to that point instead of being content to bring forward a Bill on behalf of the Treasury. We ought to recognise that direct connections to cottages matter as much as incidental connections as byproducts to connections to cowsheds.
On 23rd March, 1954, a member of the Inland Water Survey Committee, Mr. Ionides, wrote a letter to "The Times"

in which he said that the Ministry's response to the Report of the Inland Water Survey Committee
was to suppress the Committee's report, close down the Inland Water Survey, disband its staff and inform the members of the Advisory Committee that it would be called together only if there should be any urgent business for their consideration!
That does not bespeak a Government really concerned with rural water supplies.

Mr. Garner Evans: Oh.

Mr. Brown: Let the hon. Gentleman defend it if he can.

Mr. Evans: How long did that committee take to report on those grandiose schemes? Was it not possible that if the committee were shut down we might get on with local water supplies that are really worth while?

Mr. Brown: Is that not typical of a Tory Government to say, "If we shut down the local people so that all the strings are in the hands of the people in Whitehall, we shall be able to do it better"?

Mr. Evans: The right hon. Gentleman is either incapable of understanding what I said or is unwilling to understand. I said that these were grandiose schemes put up from a central board and that I was anxious to get on with the job with local people who know something about the matter.

Mr. Brown: The members of the Inland Water Survey were local people. The hon. Gentleman has taken the point himself that he has now become a gentleman in Whitehall responsible for showing that the local people know nothing about it and for saying, "Shut them down. Disband them. Don't let us consult the Advisory Committee but let's get rid of it. We know what is best for the country." The hon. Gentleman might have quite a time in his Welsh constituency defending that point of view.
The point is that the Government decided that the Report of the Inland Water Survey Committee was inconvenient to them and they decided not to publish it but to suppress it, and in case the Advisory Committee should try any more inconvenient reports the Government disbanded it.

Mr. Evans: Mr. Evans rose——

Mr. Brown: I think the hon. Member will make an attractive speech in a moment attacking this Report. Although it is not for me to say who should catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, I hope that the hon. Member does so because I hope to hear a speech from him attacking the independent advisory committees. I like to see Tories and National Liberals giving vent to their real feeling.

Mr. Evans: Mr. Evans rose——

Mr. Brown: I will not give way again to the hon. Gentleman. If I do so too often he will feel that he need not make a speech, and I want him to be on record as having made a speech.
Why did the Government disband the Committee and suppress its Report? Why did not they let the Advisory Committee tell us what it thought? Since the Government said that they would call it back if there were any urgent business, I want to know whether they have yet called it back, because the provision of a piped water supply for rural England is very urgent indeed.
One of the areas of England which is very badly served with a piped water supply is the Eastern Counties. Another very bad area is that for which my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Watkins) speaks out and for which the hon. Member for Denbigh never speaks out—Wales. I can understand the problem in Wales, which is mountainous and difficult for engineering, but East Anglia is not a difficult area, so why is it—perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us—that East Anglia features among the areas with a very bad record in this respect under a Conservative Government?
I am bound to say that there are many problems—and I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) is advising his colleague, the hon. Member for Denbigh. The hon. Member for Barry knows no more about rural water supplies and sewerage than his colleagues, but he understands a little more about politics, and I have no doubt that he will be able to give his colleague good advice on the politics of the matter which may result in his colleague not making a speech—to the disappointment of us all.
This Bill is a great disappointment to the House. There is room for a better Bill, for a Bill which would improve the situation. This Bill is a gift, and nearly a

wholly-free gift, to the money-lenders. This arranges our affairs so that the Minister will be able to leave with the authorities the whole problem of borrowing money.
Under the old arrangement, with all its disadvantages, the Ministry said, "This is our grant. You borrow the rest." Under the new arrangement, the local authority is left to borrow the whole amount, and so the interest charges are increased because it is borrowing so much more. Under the old arrangement, the authority borrowed 40 or 50 or 60 per cent. Under the new arrangement the authority will borrow the lot, and because it borrows the lot it will pay much more in interest charges; and because it pays much more in interest charges over a long period, the Ministry will pay much more to the authority. That is the reason for the £19 million mentioned in the Bill. This is a free gift to the money-lenders of £19 million in order to prevent the Treasury from having to make its full grants this year.
Belper Rural District Council and Repton Rural District Council will now borrow more money and will get then-revenue charges met year by year by the Treasury. At the end of it all we shall get no more piped water supplies than otherwise we should have got and no more rural sewerage schemes than otherwise we should have got and, according to the Memorandum, we shall have paid £19 million more for that in England and Wales.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury smiles. If there is any other explanation it is a different one from the one given by his hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary. Since all of us who are experienced know that he was reading the brief provided by the Financial Secretary, there was either something wrong with the brief or there was something wrong with the hon. Gentleman's reading of it. We shall be prepared to hear the Financial Secretary in addition to the Parliamentary Secretary. Let the Financial Secretary explain it to us if the explanation is different from that of his hon. Friend and the one given by me. Let him follow me; we shall make room for him. We shall make no difficulties. My guess is that the Financial Secretary will not get up because what I have said and what his hon. Friend has said is true.
This is a device to provide the same amount of pipes, the same amount of water supplies, the same amount of rural sewerage at a very heavily increased cost. This Government prefer hire-purchase to paying as they go. This is a scheme to unload on the taxpayer and his descendants charges that ought to occur in this year. I can find no reason at all to applaud this Bill. We are quite prepared to leave hon. Members who want to take the responsibility to enjoy the responsibility of carrying it. Most of us on this side of the House spend the week-ends addressing meetings in the rural areas. It is not part of our business to stop hon. Members opposite who want to give us things to speak about. We do not propose to interfere; we propose to allow the Government to have the Bill.
The hon. Member for Denbigh may well enjoy the pleasure of carrying the Bill. I shall very soon enjoy the pleasure of going to Denbigh to explain why he supports the Bill. It would be very silly of me to stop him the Bill. The hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Godber) ought to have the pleasure of being responsible and the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Bullard), with his tiny majority, ought to have the pleasure of being responsible for this Bill. We shall not stop them.

Mr. J. B. Godber: As the right hon. Member mentioned me, perhaps when he comes to my division he will have the pleasure of explaining why under the previous Government so little was done in water supplies and sewerage and so much is being done in my division now.

Mr. Brown: Is it not really extraordinary that the hon. Member really believes that when I come to his division to explain the shortcomings of this Bill his electorate will be satisfied with his explanation of what was wrong five years ago? If he believes that, let him have a go.

Mr. Denys Bullard: The right hon. Gentleman referred to my majority and accused us on this side of the House of being concerned with electoral matters. I think he far better concern himself with rural water supplies. I can tell him that the position in South-West Norfolk is far better than it was.

Mr. Brown: If I remember, the Gadarene swine took a similar view, but they went over the brink just the same. The hon. Member may be right and I may be wrong. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] I am prepared to concede that. When hon. Members opposite are prepared to concede that point to us, it will be time for us to worry. The point is that with all the assurance of hon. Members opposite that they are right and we are wrong, we are still prepared to allow them to carry this Bill. I am still willing to go to South-West Norfolk and Grantham and Denbigh and Barnstaple to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, your Member helped to carry a Bill which, for the same amount of piped water and sewerage, cost you as taxpayers £19 million more."

Mr. Raymond Gower: If the right hon. Gentleman criticises the Bill so strongly, why are he and his colleagues so willing to allow it to go through?

Mr. Brown: We are willing to allow the Bill to go through because—does the hon. Member want to know the answer, or does he suspect already what it is? [Interruption.] The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for South Angus (Captain Duncan) really ought not to let himself go. He is too old a hand. He is no minnow. He ought not to fall into the trap. The answer to the hon. Member for Barry is that we are willing to allow the Bill to go through as we rather relish the idea of going to Barry to explain how it was that it went through.

Colonel Alan Gomme-Duncan: The right hon. Gentleman said just now that we were doing this from an electoral point of view. It seems to me that this party political game he is prepared to play with his hon. Friends is purely for electoral purposes.

Mr. Brown: To go from Barry to Denbigh and Perth and back—or forwards—to Angus is quite a business, but let me deal with Perth before I deal with Barnstaple.

Commander Maitland: The right hon. Gentleman means Horncastle not Barnstaple. Let him get it right, for goodness' sake.

Mr. Brown: Horncastle. I must remember, if I am to go on so many tours about the country. The answer to the


hon. and gallant Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel Gomme-Duncan) is that the Government calculated this would be electorally advantageous to them, because the Bill will give the Financial Secretary a bit more money to distribute under the Income Tax. I calculate that it will be electorally advantageous to us. That is why we are going to allow the Bill to go through. I am quite happy to play party politics with hon. Gentlemen opposite. I am an old hand, like the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for South Angus. I calculate that is electorally advantageous to us because I can go to the rural areas and explain that in order that the Chancellor of the Exchequer may give a bit more money away to the payers of Income Tax——

Mr. Victor Collins: And Surtax.

Mr. Brown: —people in the rural areas have got to pay a rate inflated by the amount necessary to service the additional loan charges of £19 million. Hon. Gentlemen opposite are entitled to take their choice. I gather the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Horn-castle (Commander Maitland) does not want to pursue the point?

Commander Maitland: I wanted to be the first Member to congratulate the party opposite on having found, or on thinking they had found, one point on which to fight the next General Election. [Hon. Members: "Tea."]

Mr. Brown: Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad. Do not let the hon. and gallant Gentleman worry himself about us. The reason we cut the Tory majority at Norfolk, South from 3,500 to 800—[Hon. Members: "What about Sunderland, South?"] We are talking about rural areas.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: This is a Second Reading debate. We are not in Committee.

Mr. Brown: I think it is quite right that we should remind hon. Gentlemen opposite of the facts. I am quite reasonable about these things. What I was going to say was that the Bill is entitled a Rural Water Supplies Bill, and Sunderland is hardly a rural area. Let

the party opposite note that the reason why we are progressing in the rural areas, the reason why we managed to cut the Tory majority in Norfolk, South is that we had many issues on which to fight the by-election. It is very clear from the response of hon. Members opposite that they are extremely uncomfortable about the Bill. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite laugh.

Sir Arthur Colegate: The right hon. Gentleman would vote against it if he had any guts.

Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman is rather lucky. He is giving up the constituency of Burton next time. He is my political neighbour. He has the distinction that alone among his friends, in an election which favoured the Tory Party, he managed to cut his own majority by 50 per cent. No wonder he is giving up Burton next time. He ought not to erupt too much.

Mr. Collins: My right hon. Friend is being a little unjust to the hon. Member for Burton (Sir A. Colegate). The hon. Member can hardly be expected to take a great interest in water.

Mr. Brown: What we send out from Burton has more to do with what flows from the Trent than anything else.
The laughter on the benches opposite is the best evidence that hon. Members opposite are most uncomfortable about the Bill. They know as well as I do that no more rural water will flow as a result of the Bill and that no more rural sewage will be carted away properly as a result of it. They also know that it will cost us, in England and Wales alone, £19 million more to provide the same amount of water and to cart away the same amount of sewage.
The hon. and gallant Member for Perth and East Perthshire may like to know that it will cost Scotland £8½ million more to carry the same amount of water to rural areas in Scotland and to carry the same amount of sewage from those areas. If the Tory majority in the House thinks it effective and useful to carry through a Bill to spend £27½ million more to do the same amount of work, let it do so, but I am very clear that in choosing after 10 p.m. for the purpose, it was very well served by its Patronage Secretary.

10.47 p.m.

Mr. Horace E. Holmes: It may be that in what I am about to say I shall soon be ruled out of order, having in mind that the Bill is narrow and limited, but after the wide range covered by my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown), I hope that the Chair will look kindly upon me.
I had great hopes when I first knew that the Bill was to be introduced. A short time ago I was in communication with the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries with regard to the water supply in the rural area of Hemsworth, which is rich agricultural land. One dairy farmer in my constituency, who has been in business for 20 years or more, has had to close down because the water supply is not up to the standard required to maintain his farm. I may be wrong, but I had the impression from the Parliamentary Secretary's speech and his reference to spending £12 million in one year, £14 million in another and £17 million in the next that there is to be an easing of restrictions on capital investment and a rapid development of water supplies in rural areas. I could not follow my right hon. Friend on all the ground that he covered, but he kept within order fairly well.
What I should like to know is this. What can the rural districts expect from this Bill?

Mr. G. Brown: To pay more rates.

Mr. Holmes: Can the rural district of Hemsworth expect some easing of the capital investment question? In my area, the rural district council proposed a scheme. It had the blessing of the West Riding County Council, the agricultural executive committee and the National Farmers' Union, but in spite of that, because of the capital investment question, it was turned down. In the Hemsworth rural district there are farms which still have to have water carted in on barrows, and one dairy farmer has had to close down.
If the Bill is all that my right hon. Friend has said it is, it will be a disappointment for the rural district councils, and I hope that before long we will have another Bill——

Mr. Brown: And another Government.

Mr. Holmes: —that will widen the opportunities for getting water in the rural districts.

10.52 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: My powers of invective do not match those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown), but I have an additional reason for being kinder to the Parliamentary Secretary than was my right hon. Friend. I want to get something out of him before I finish.
The hon. Gentleman gave very little explanation of the reasons for this Bill. He was at some pains to explain what the Bill would do but said very little as to why it is before us at all. I wondered while he was speaking whether this is a reversion to orthodox Treasury finance. In more than one respect, Governments of the past appear to have shirked capital expenditure. If they can, Governments desire to spread their commitments over a number of years. We have notorious examples of that in connection with the provision of accommodation for Government staffs.
The Ministry of Works is very reluctant to embark on capital expenditure on a Government building. Rather will it go in search of someone who will acquire the site, put up the building and then lease it to the Government for 21 years.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is getting a little far from the Bill when he talks about housing Government staffs. The Bill deals with water supplies.

Mr. Houghton: With great respect, Mr. Speaker, I am giving examples of what I believe to be the orthodox approach by the Treasury to capital expenditure underlying the Bill.
As I understand it, this is a change from lump sum payments on capital account to an instalment plan. That has the same effect of refusing to embark on the capital expenditure of a new Government building and choosing the alternative of a long lease for a lessor's building. I am trying to get at the reason why the Government have introduced the Bill.
My right hon. Friend, with bold prediction, suggested that this was one of


the ways in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer would reduce his commitments in the next financial year to an extent to enable him to distribute tax reliefs in the forthcoming Budget. I make no prediction about what the Chancellor of the Exchequer distributes in the forthcoming Budget. I am not so sure that he will have very much to distribute at all, but I doubt whether the contribution which he gets from this Bill will make any difference anyway.
I hope that when the Parliamentary Secretary replies he will explain more fully why this proposal is brought to the House, because it is going to cost more in the long run. That has been made plain. It is going to cost more because there will be interest payments over extended periods instead of immediate discharge of liability in the form of lump sums. In our domestic affairs we have always been told that prudence would justify paying spot cash for things if we could, and that we ought to resort to hire-purchase or instalment plans only if we have not the money to spend initially.
I do not think the Government are in any difficulty about providing the finances necessary for the lump sum payments under the 1944 Act. Let me turn now to something else which the Parliamentary Secretary said. He stated that there would be no change in the Bill of the grounds and conditions on which grants would be made. I hope it is in order for me to say that I regret that. In Clause 1 the Bill refers again to "a rural locality." I have been looking up the Second Reading debate on the 1944 Act, and the debate during the Committee stage, which took place on the 8th June, 1944. I saw incidentally that the hon. Member for Elland, a Mr. Thomas Levy, said in rather strong terms that the Bill was a pretence and a sham, and that it would not do anything, anyway. Elland now occupies an honoured and influential place in the Sowerby Division, and is as interested today, as then, in water and sewerage facilities in rural areas.
The figures which the Parliamentary Secretary gave were impressive. To be fair, I thought that the totals he mentioned would not justify the forecast which the then hon. Member for Elland made about the efficacy of the 1944 Act; but I saw nothing there in either of the debates which helped me with this

troublesome question of the interpretation of the term, "rural locality." I realise the difficulty of drawing in any Bill definitions which will put beyond any doubt the intentions of the House. It may be that the difficulty of the interpretation of the term "rural locality," which we see in Clause 1, goes back as far as the 1934 Act. Anyhow, as the Parliamentary Secretary knows, I have been having an exchange of views with him on the proper interpretation of the words, "a rural locality," which are important not only in the original 1944 Act, but are still important as they are written into this Bill.
The 1944 Act and this Bill will continue to give the Minister wide powers of interpretation of the term "a rural locality." One is inclined to ask, "What is a rural locality; when is a rural locality not a rural locality?" I have in my constituency a rural locality which the Minister says is, interpretating the terms as used in the 1944 Act—and which is used again in Clause 1 of this Bill—not a rural locality because it happens to be part of an urban district.
These are very troublesome matters. I sympathise with the Minister in having to deal with them, but what is a local authority to say if it is an urban district council which, on a redistribution of boundaries, finds itself now embracing a purely rural area previously part of a rural district council area for which a sewerage scheme is now proposed, and in respect of which the Minister says, "This rural area is no longer a rural locality because it is part of an urban district area"?
To be fair to the Minister, he says that
Urban districts are not ruled out as such and grant has, in fact, been paid to urban district councils in a very small number of cases where, because of the general character of the locality, and the size and distribution of the population, the Minister has felt justified in regarding them as comparable to rural districts.
That is a quotation from a letter which the Parliamentary Secretary was kind enough to send me on 30th November last. But when the Minister gives a reply to a local authority on a question of interpretation of this kind and says that the place, which I mention only for illustration, Norland Town—although its title belies it—is not a rural locality when everybody locally knows that it is, of


course there are cries of derision from all who know the facts and who cannot understand why what is so obviously to them, and to anybody who knows it, a rural locality is judged by the Minister not to be such.
I hope that, in continuing the provisions of the 1944 Act under the Bill, the Minister will look more liberally at the problems of urban districts which have the exceptional cost of providing water supplies and sewerage facilities to rural localities which are part of their urban areas. The Parliamentary Secretary was good enough to say that, when seeing cases of this kind, he naturally asked himself whether the Ministry's policy or precedents were right and whether there was a case for looking again at the hallowed practices of the Ministry over perhaps the last 20 years and considering whether greater flexibility should be given.
I hope that he will find it possible to do that, because otherwise it makes it very difficult for hon. Members of this House to explain to their constituents the apparent contradiction in terms between a rural locality for the purposes of the Act and the Bill and a rural area which is ruled out because it is said to be part of an urban area. I think, too, that it is a justifiable criticism of the Bill that it is really still only tinkering with the much bigger problem of water supplies throughout the country. We are a very long way yet from having achieved any degree of satisfactory provision of these essential services in many of the scattered areas. I hope that the Minister will be able to give me some assurance on the latter point as well as more explanation than he has given already of the reasons for introducing the Bill.

11.5 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: I share my hon. Friend's anxieties as to the reason for the introduction of this Bill. There seems to be something a little humorous about it. I understand that the Treasury is now engaged in viewing with a certain amount of alarm a semi-inflationary situation, and particularly the growth of hire purchase. It hardly seems to be the moment for the Government themselves to bring forward a Measure the effect of which appears to be—like other forms of hire purchase—to mortgage the future in order to secure

the appearance of greater prosperity in the present. To quote a famous phrase, I feel that "It's That Man Again." Mr. Gibson Jarvie must have been trotting round the Government Departments—having perhaps been thrown out of the Ministry of Transport at long last—spreading some of these dangerous doctrines, even in so orthodox, so austere and, one would have thought, so critical a place as I have always understood the Treasury to be in matters of this sort.
It looks as if somebody has got to borrow, but if anybody has to borrow it should not be local authorities—or, at any rate, if local authorities are to be forced to borrow, they should have some say about it. This is a really remarkable proposal, because although Clause 1 (1) certainly refers to future arrangements, subsection (2) refers to arrangements which have already been made. One does not expect to see even the Law Officers or the representatives of the Foreign Office here when we are discussing such matters as this at this hour of the night, but what they would say to a unilateral breach of contract sanctioned by Statute I do not quite know.
Local authorities are not even to be allowed to say a word about the matter; without their consent, without consultation with them, the Minister, having promised one thing, is entitled at his own sweet will to substitute something else, and if they protest and say that they would rather have the other arrangement, they have no means of giving effect to it. The Minister has power to substitute not merely what is equivalent, but what he thinks is equivalent, for that which is forcibly taken away from them.
This is a really serious form of legislation. I thought that the party opposite had some sort of respect for the sanctity of contract and the pledges given to local authorities in these matters, but here we are, without a protest from any hon. Member opposite, allowing promises to be broken at the mere ipse dixit of the Government, upon such terms as the Government think suitable. It is pretty stiff, and I hope that it may be remedied during the Committee stage.
I now turn to an entirely different matter. The essential thing about water supplies and sewerage schemes, at any rate in rural areas, is that in the long


run the amount of water one puts into a village has to come out somewhere, but for some reason or other there is always a lamentable delay in sewerage schemes as compared with water supply. In my part of the world the Labour Government provided the Mid-Northamptonshire Water Board, and that was a very good thing, because no single local authority could have done the work which that water board is doing. It is doing it well, and rather faster, but there is no corresponding acceleration in the sewerage schemes.
The position is even worse than that. What happens is that the Mid-Northamptonshire Water Board dig up a road—and that may be quite expensive if a long section is involved—while the sewerage schemes are still in the stage of having been approved in principle without any authority to proceed having been given. Consequently, while they are still hanging between the heaven of approval and the further heaven of execution—swung, as it were, in the celestial sphere—the road is filled in again, and a lot of money will have to be wasted later on in digging up the same road again to put in the sewerage system.
If the Parliamentary Secretary wants an instance I can give him one. Perhaps he will consider the matter of Cransley. There he will find that the water supply scheme was submitted in, I think, 1952, but that sanction to proceed has not yet been received, and, if he makes further inquiries, he will find that the road in that part of the world is being dug up at the moment in order to put in the water pipes. He should get his people to face realities and give authority to proceed in this matter.
I have said all I wanted to say, except to urge that there should be a substantial increase of funds for sewerage. It is not a very interesting subject and does not attract much attention. The Parliamentary Secretary will find that rural sewerage has been lagging behind water supply not only recently but for long years past, and that he will be able to justify himself by the time-honoured expedient of blaming the previous Government. I ask him to face facts and get on with the supply of rural sewerage.

11.11 p.m.

Mr. F. H. Hayman: I emphasise the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) in getting a definition of "rural locality." I live in the urban district of Camborne-Redruth, which is within my own constituency. It has an acreage of 22,500, which is nearly twice the acreage of Plymouth, but although Plymouth has a population of well over 200,000, my urban district has only 35,000-odd.
This urban district was created in order to throw upon the ratepayers of the two former urban districts the cost of providing sewerage and water supplies for villages in a former rural district. We have the odd spectacle that 25 years ago the former rural council did sewer one village, which has not got water up to this day. Our urban district was once very depressed, and the cost of this heavy capital burden hits us very hard. Now we have a very high rate, although we still have immense burdens to carry to provide sewerage and water for many of the villages, which are really rural localities within our urban district.
I turn to the Financial and Explanatory Memorandum, which says in its last paragraph:
In so far as lump sum payments are replaced by periodical payments towards revenue expenditure, additional expenditure out of moneys provided by Parliament will be entailed. The amount cannot be estimated accurately, but may be of the order of £19m. for England and Wales and £8½m. for Scotland, spread over 30–35 years.
As I understand that, it means that we shall spend £27½ million more than was contemplated and we get nothing more for it. It will mean for the County of Cornwall in which I live an additional burden of over £250,000. True, it is going to come from the taxpayer instead of the ratepayer, but nevertheless for a population of 330,000 the additional expenditure, for which we get nothing more, amounts to over £250,000. That figure, taken over the whole of the rural areas of England, Wales and Scotland, will be found to represent far more than £1 per head of the population. It seems to me that this Bill ought to have a new title—the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage (Hire Purchase) Bill.

11.16 p.m.

Mr. Tudor Watkins: I am disappointed that the two Welsh Members who continually interrupted my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) have now left the Chamber. I would have liked them to support my plea that the Parliamentary Secretary should dissect the figures which he gave for England and Wales so that we could have known the Welsh figures, for I am very interested—even if those two hon. Members are not—to ascertain exactly what the figures for Wales are. The Parliamentary Secretary may not have those figures with him tonight, and, to save me putting down a Question, perhaps he will let me have them at a later date.
The Parliamentary Secretary said that he would examine the possibility of enabling a change to be made from lump sum payments to instalment payments in schemes costing £1,000 or less. Why select schemes of £1,000? Why not £2,000? I am sure that would be a great advantage to small rural authorities in Wales. If the hon. Gentleman cannot agree to £2,000, let us split the difference and agree on £1,500.
An hon. Member asked the Parliamentary Secretary a question about Clause 1 (2). The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland has the power, in cases where grants have been indicated beforehand, to decide when the instalments shall come into operation. I should like to know on what basis he will decide whether to switch over to the instalment plan from the lump sum payment system. I put this point because in my constituency there are 21 local authorities, many of which have water and sewerage schemes and they have been informed of the amount of a provisional grant. I suggest that in cases where a provisional grant has been indicated, we should retain the lump sum payment principle, because it would encourage those local authorities which now have water supply schemes to undertake sewerage schemes immediately afterwards.
The Minister said that after the Government have indicated the amount of the grant to these local authorities, the county councils and the rural district councils would usually pay the remaining

proportion of the amount required. But it does not work out in that way. When the Government have given increased Exchequer grants, the county councils in Wales have not paid so much as the rural district councils. If the Minister were to ask for a return from Welsh local authorities he would be surprised to find that the amount which the Exchequer is now giving by way of increased grants is not really passed on to the rural districts.
When the Minister deals with the payments which are to be made by county councils and rural districts, he should make sure that there is a uniform way of making those payments. I have seen a return of these payments which are made by the county councils in Wales. They vary in practically all counties. There ought to be some uniform method; the Minister ought to suggest to the counties the most appropriate way, the way which will suit the local authority in the rural district, and not let the matter be steam-rollered through by the county councils—although I am a member of a county council, fortunately as an alderman.
I am sure it would meet the unanimous wish of the House and expedite all rural water supply and sewerage schemes—and I speak particularly of Wales—if the Ministry set up a panel of consulting engineers, because some of the rural authorities who try to get excellent consulting engineers find great difficulty. The good consulting engineers are taken up by a great number of authorities so that they cannot give their minds to water supply and sewerage schemes. As a consequence, there is much delay. I am certain that if my suggestion were adopted the Government would be able to get more of these local authorities to undertake schemes, knowing quite well that they would have the Government's backing.
I am glad that we have had this debate on the Bill but, coming from a rural constituency, I must say that I should have preferred it to take place earlier in the evening so that urban Members on all sides of the House might learn more about the difficulties which we have in rural areas and so that we might thus get more support from the Government and from the Opposition.

11.22 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: All of us on this side of the House were a little sorry for the junior Ministers who had the job of commending the Bill to the House. We are even more sorry for them now, because, since the Parliamentary Secretary introduced the Bill, briefly yet lucidly, the Government have been assailed from this side of the House but, unfortunately for the Parliamentary Secretary, not one cheep has come from his side of the House in support of the Government.

Major H. Legge-Bourke: We want the Bill.

Mr. Fraser: But when the Parliamentary Secretary was speaking he was interrupted, in the middle of his speech, by his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Horncastle (Commander Maitland) who criticised the Bill. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) had concluded his speech, the hon. and gallant Member had disappeared from the scene.

Mr. G. Brown: Sunk without trace.

Mr. Fraser: The truth is that the Government supporters are utterly ashamed of the Bill. When the Bill was presented to the House for First Reading, those of us who are interested in the provision of rural water supplies and sewerage thought the Government had some plans for the provision of these services and we waited with baited breath to read the contents of the Bill. We then discovered, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper said, that the Bill had nothing whatever to do with the provision of water supplies and sewerage in rural areas. It is purely a financial Bill.
I have given a fair amount of attention to providing these services all the time I have been in the House, and I well remember the presentation of the 1944 Bill. I think the sums then made available from the Government were £6⅜ million for Scotland and £15 million for England and Wales. I have better reason to recall the introduction, Second Reading, Committee and later stages of the 1949 Water (Scotland) Act, because by that time the Labour Government had increased the amount of Government money being made available to assist

local authorities in providing water supplies and sewerage from £6⅜ million to £20 million.
One of the Joint Under-Secretaries of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Fife, East (Mr. Henderson Stewart), then described our Bill, on 9th November, 1948, as "a fraud." He said that the amount of money was hopelessly inadequate and the length of time we anticipated that it would take to spend the £20 million was a fraud. I thought he had such influence with the Government that when we got this new Bill the amount of money to be spent would be increased so that the Government contribution towards the provision of rural water supplies and sewerage would be increased, but not at all. The cost to the taxpayer is to be increased by 40 per cent.
The £50 million provided for England and Wales in the 1951 Act is now to be increased by some £19 million. The £20 million provided for Scotland in the 1949 Act is to be increased by £8½ million. But not one extra length of pipe is to be provided. As some of my hon. Friends have said, it seems remarkable that this Government, who have been playing down hire purchase—trying to stop my constituent Mrs. Brown from buying a wireless set, a washing machine, or a television set by hire purchase and discouraging her to the utmost—insist that Mrs. Brown shall get her rural water supply or sewerage by hire purchase.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Commander T. D. Galbraith): The hon. Member has been speaking about extra lengths of pipe being laid. Surely if he has been watching things at all he has noticed that, whereas the value of work done in the last year in which he had any responsibility was £2 million, in this last year the value of work done on water supplies and sewerage was £3·3 million.

Mr. Fraser: The right hon. and gallant Gentleman has spoken too quickly. The Act under which the £3½ million has been spent was the Act passed in 1949 after which, as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman knows, local authorities got together to discuss regional schemes. If he likes to make inquiry he will discover that between the passage of the 1949 Act and the change of Government in 1951 I spent a considerable amount of time


urging local authorities to initiate schemes. I did not spend my time stopping local authorities going ahead, but in urging them to go ahead with schemes. I am delighted to know that they took my advice and that schemes are now going ahead.
Will the right hon. and gallant Gentleman deny the allegation we on this side of the House make that this Bill will not in fact provide one extra foot of piping, one additional gallon of water, or one little additional sewerage scheme? It will not; it has not that purpose at all. The purpose is merely to spread the expenditure of Government money over a longer period—a period of 30 to 35 years. I have lived all my life in a rural area. I would prefer that I should now pay for rural water supplies and sewerage provisions than merely order the fulfilment of those schemes and leave the paying for them to my children. Hon. Members opposite would not want to leave the payments on nice country houses to their families when they would find those payments difficult to make; they would rather leave their families free of those burdens.

Mr. Gower: Surely the whole system of local government housing is spread over a period.

Mr. Fraser: Of course the financing of housing is spread over a period. The financing of new schools and hospitals was spread over a period. That was deliberate policy because the cost of providing them in one year or in a short period was a heavy one for the Government of the day to meet, but is the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower), who interrupted my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper so assiduously and then departed from the Chamber, suggesting for a minute that this Government cannot find, out of their income, a contribution towards the provision of this service? The sum of £17 million was discussed by the Parliamentary Secretary. Is the hon. Gentleman the Member for Barry of the opinion that out of a Budget of £4,500 million the Chancellor cannot find £17 million for rural water supplies? I refuse to believe it.
In any case, there must be a number of local authorities that do not have to

borrow the balance to be met for small schemes. They meet that out of current revenue at the present time. Why should the Parliamentary Secretary say that in future they will be able to deal only with schemes costing less than £1,000? Why should those local authorities be required to borrow money over a period of 30 to 35 years? It seems to me scandalous that the local authorities' right of decision should be taken from them in this way.
I would ask a few questions about the position in Scotland. First, like my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), I should like to know how sewerage schemes are proceeding. He told us that they were not proceeding very well in his part of the country. We all know that members of local authorities, like Members of Parliament, get a little more excited over the provision of clean piped water supplies than they do about the sewerage to take away the waste. We should like to know, if we can be told, whether satisfactory progress is being made with the provision of the necessary sewerage.
There has been some discussion—my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper raised the matter—about the amount of grant, first of all the percentage grant, and whether the grant is paid on the estimated cost of the scheme or on what the scheme ultimately costs. My recollection is that in Scotland—I remember negotiating some of these schemes with local authorities, sometimes with groups of local authorities—the Government normally negotiate the percentage grant and then pay the percentage on the approved final cost. I wonder whether we can be told if that is so in Scotland, and whether it is also so in England and Wales? It is rather important. There can be a difference between the estimated cost and the approved final cost of a scheme.
Can we be told what is the percentage grant on average, taking schemes as a whole? I mean the percentage grant from Government funds. From 1948 to 1949, when the Scottish Measure was before Parliament, we estimated that the cost of the schemes necessary in Scotland to provide piped water supplies and adequate sewerage in the whole country was about £40 million. That was why at the time we offered a provision of


£20 million in the Bill, as it then was. We estimated that the Government would contribute about 50 per cent. of the cost. I wonder if we can be told what has now proved to be the percentage grant? Is it more than 50 per cent. or less? I believe that in Scotland at least the percentage grant is down more than 50 per cent. It was my experience that we had to grant more than 50 per cent. for water supplies to get the schemes going, having regard to the ability of the local authorities to pay for them.
It is important that we should know what is the average percentage. We should know whether it is more than was estimated in 1949 in Scotland and more than was estimated in 1951 in England and Wales. Having regard to the fact that costs have increased somewhat between 1951 and 1955——

Mr. G. Brown: More than somewhat.

Mr. Fraser: The cost of some of the materials has gone up, and wages have gone up a little in chasing the increased cost of living since 1951.
If our estimate was a fair one in 1951, it seems to us on this side of the House that the amounts then determined must now seem inadequate. If £20 million was right in 1949 in Scotland, on the assumption that the grant was 50 per cent.—and I think that it will have been more than 50 per cent.—and costs have gone up, the volume of work we expected would be done with the assistance of £20 million of Government money cannot now be fulfilled in terms of the then statute. The Bill provides no extra money to meet increased costs. The only sum that is provided in the Bill is the sum which is required because the Government are going over from lump payments to hire purchase terms.
These questions are important. It seems to some of us that if the House is to be asked to devote some time to discussing the Bill then, having regard to the facts in our possession, it is a great pity that we are not discussing the granting of more money to assist in extending the provision of rural water supplies and making sure that they are adequate, rather than wasting the time of Parliament in discussing cheap arrangements by which the Government will be able to save money in a short time by incurring greater costs in the long run.

11.38 p.m.

Mr. Deedes: A good many points have been raised in the course of the debate.

Mr. G. Brown: All from this side of the House.

Mr. Deedes: The connection of one or two of them with the Bill was rather tenuous, but I will try to deal with all of them.
Before I deal with some of the other points which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) raised, I should like to answer first two questions asked by the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser). The average grant in respect of schemes in Scotland works out at about 60 per cent., that is subject to a grant on retention money of 10 per cent. The hon. Member also asked the amount of money which was uncommitted in respect of grants to be given. I mentioned the figure in the course of my earlier remarks. A sum of about £4,800,000 of the £20 million is uncommitted. We note with satisfaction the hon. Member's remarks about what will be his attitude if and when we have to ask for a refreshment of that sum.

Mr. Mitchison: Can the hon. Gentleman give us the corresponding percentage, which we hope is greater, for England and Wales?

Mr. Deedes: Again, it is variable, but it is probably about one-third. I should refer the hon. and learned Member to the instructions which were issued on this subject at the time of the Act in 1944, in which it was made quite clear that there would be no fixed rate of grant. I want to be careful in mentioning any figure, because there is no fixed rate of grant. When I answer the questions already raised on the subject concerning the rate of grant to local authorities, my need for caution will be more clearly recognised.

Mr. Mitchison: It would cause great trouble if there were to be any misunderstanding about this. Am I right in supposing that the Scots get twice as large a percentage on the average as we do? If so, why?

Mr. Deedes: So I am advised. I cannot answer for the Scots in this.
The speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Belper


gave him great pleasure; he enjoyed himself very much. Some of his pleasure was innocent, and some less innocent. I am not crossing swords with the right hon. Gentleman on what he said. The short answer to the bulk of what he said about the Bill and myself in connection with it is
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
I prefer to leave it at that.
The right hon. Member said, however, that the Bill did not take us one stage further. But would he say that it would not make the smallest difference to housing or education if we departed from the system of helping water supplies by annual Exchequer payments towards the loan charges incurred by local authorities and if Exchequer grants for all projects in housing and education had to be paid for in lump sums? I am sure he would not. Everybody would say that that was a retrograde step. So that what we are doing in the Bill is a forward step which will very much increase the flexibility of our financial arrangements with the local authorities.

Mr. Hayman: Would the Parliamentary Secretary, then, deprecate local authorities which try to provide for small projects out of revenue instead of by borrowing?

Mr. Deedes: We have already dealt with small projects. Projects of up to £1,000 will continue to be paid for in lump sums.

Mr. Brown: The Parliamentary Secretary asked whether I would agree that the Government ought to go to annual financing in the case of housing and education. Does he, therefore, say that because the taxpayer cannot pay his larger commitments out of his annual income, he should not pay his smaller commitments out of his annual income? Because he cannot finance his housing and education out of annual income—tremendous costs are incurred by doing it on hire purchase—why should he then incur enormous costs on financing rural water and sewerage, which he can quite easily pay for out of his annual income?

Mr. Deedes: As I pointed out earlier, this commitment has very much increased in recent years, from £1 million in 1934 to £8 million now. We consider that to be a figure of significance.
The right hon. Member also mentioned the time factor in relation to these schemes. I accept that a number of them take a long time. I do not accept that the delay is attributable always either to finance or to the Department's machinery. The planning of these schemes, the computing of demand, designing all new works and all the other preliminary preparations that go into these schemes take time, and the schemes have to be approved by the Ministry before grant. The direct answer to both the right hon. Member and also to the hon. Member for Hamilton is that grants are always reviewed when the final cost is known. If there is an increase in cost, the provisional grant may be increased.

Mr. Brown: Often?

Mr. Deedes: It rather depends on how long the scheme has been delayed; that is the principal factor. The real answer is to cut as far as possible the time lag between submission and approval, and the increased amounts which I mentioned earlier tonight will, I hope, contribute towards this. The fact that the taxpayer has a stake limits the amount that can be approved in any one financial year.
The third point which the right hon. Gentleman made was in connection with the Inland Water Survey Committee. I would point out that it was mentioned by me in another debate on rural water, when I said that the Central Advisory Water Committee, appointed in 1946 and suspended in 1951, is to be revived. That has been set up and will have a subcommittee to advise the Minister on questions concerning the collection of water and will give other useful information. It will have a substantial scientific representation, and I think it will fulfil the functions which the right hon. Gentleman was concerned about in relation to inland water.

Mr. Brown: What was the matter with the other committee? Why disband it so that a new committee can be set up?

Mr. Deedes: There was no trouble. This Central Advisory Water Committee was suspended in 1951 and has now been resuscitated; it is now going into action. It will perform the necessary functions.
The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Holmes), who is no longer in his place,


asked whether a local authority which he represents could expect an easing of capital expenditure. The answer to that is yes, clearly, because the figures I gave indicated that whereas last year the total authorised for grant was £12 million, this year it will be £14 million, and in the next financial year it will be £17 million. Obviously I am not prepared to take these figures beyond March, 1956.
The hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) and the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) asked why the Bill had been introduced. I thought I had been at pains in my earlier remarks to say why that was so. It puts water into the same category as housing and education. We are now dealing with a far more substantial amount than in 1934, when rural water grants were first considered. It is now £8 million a year from the Exchequer. This now goes on to the same basis, and should go on to the same basis, as other public services.
The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman) wanted to know more about the definition of a rural locality. The short answer is that there is no definition of that term in the Act. There is no statutory definition, and there is no definition that I shall attempt to give the House tonight. We try to interpret this reasonably, as I think the hon. Member has reason to know. It has to be decided in every case. He quoted me as having said that urban districts and boroughs are not ruled out. They might be if the wording were rather tighter than it is. In a small number of cases, they have been treated as comparable with rural districts and eligible, therefore, for the grant.
The two factors which we take particularly into account are the general character of the locality, and then the size and the distribution and density of the population. I think the hon. Member will agree that that is a reasonable way of judging the matter. He asked me to look at the matter more liberally in future. I cannot undertake to do that, but, as always, it will be looked at as sympathetically as possible.

Mr. Hayman: Will the hon. Gentleman be prepared to receive a deputation from Camborne should it wish to send one?

Mr. Deedes: I cannot refuse that. I would be pleased to hear from the hon. Member on the subject.

Mr. Brown: Is the hon. Gentleman in fact announcing some new policy? For example, a large part of the arms estimates, about which there is a good deal of argument, is carried in the annual cost. Is the hon. Gentleman now saying that all these things are to be carried over 30 or 40 years?

Mr. Deedes: The hon. Gentleman must not tempt me on to wider grounds.

Mr. Brown: Why water?

Mr. Deedes: I have explained that, and the category of water and education. [Interruption.] The hon. and learned Member for Kettering asked me a question about sewerage. I have reassuring news for him, and to some extent for the hon. Member for Hamilton. It is true that until recently water schemes had tended to outstrip sewerage schemes. It is obvious why. The water schemes had to be given first priority, but in the last two years progress on sewerage schemes has picked up rapidly. The position is that in the year 1953–4 water schemes authorised totalled £2 million more than those in respect of sewerage; in the financial year 1954–5 £7 million was spent on each, and in the next year, 1955–6, between £7½ million and £8 million will be spent on water and between £9 million and £9½ million on sewerage. That will give the hon. and learned Gentleman some idea of the trend which the policy in respect of sewerage is now taking.

Mr. Mitchison: May I assure the hon. Gentleman that the sums will more than cover what is required in Cransley?

Mr. Deedes: The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Watkins) asked for equivalent figures for Wales. I cannot give them now, but we will see what we can find and I will give him the details. He asked about the £1,000. The answer is "approximately." I do not want to stick at £1,000 exactly, but it is not an elastic figure. The third point about which he asked was the proportion of the county council payment towards the grant. That is a matter I should like to look into. It is one which is rather specially related to his own part of the country. I should like to have


another look into the question. Perhaps I may let him know about that.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Horncastle (Commander Maitland) asked about the position of local authorities. I am anxious not to have misled him.

Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman cannot put him right now. He has gone home.

Mr. Deedes: As I hope I made clear, we intend to pay by instalments all grants except the small ones. It will not rest with the local authorities. That is decided by the Bill. I want to get it clear and beyond doubt that it is the intention of the Minister to pay all grants by periodical payments and not by lump sum, except where the amount is small. It will make no difference whatever financially to the local authorities.
The local authorities, instead of receiving a lump sum from the Exchequer, will raise a loan equal to that lump sum and will receive half-yearly grants from the Exchequer which will cover the whole of the loan charges on that loan, so the financial result for the local authorities will be exactly the same.

Mr. Brown: So it is the taxpayer who gets soaked and not the ratepayer.

Mr. Deedes: I do not accept that premise, but I am anxious that there should be no suggestion that the local authorities pay any more. The Bill will put nothing at all on the local rates.
I think that I have answered most of the questions which were asked. I do not think that the place which rural water supplies should be given is in dispute. It is accepted to be a service to be provided as fast as the money can be found. It has been a limiting factor. Progress is steady and it is now on an ascending scale.

Mr. T. Fraser: The hon. Gentleman said earlier that that was not the limiting factor. He said that the limiting factors were labour and materials. If he looks at the Official Report he will find that that is what he said.

Mr. Deedes: Perhaps I might correct the hon. Gentleman. I said that in the past labour and materials were limiting factors, but now it was the taxpayers' stake which must always be regarded as the limiting factor.
Progress is steady and on an ascending scale. The figures I have given are a part answer to the charge of the right hon. Gentleman. In respect of water at any rate, and I hope sooner or later in respect of sewerage as well, we shall be able to measure the distance between us and the completion of these vital rural services. I assure the House that we shall not shorten our strides towards that objective.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Wills.]

Committee Tomorrow.

RURAL WATER SUPPLIES AND SEWERAGE [MONEY]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees).—[Queen's Recommendation signified.]

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the requirements of the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Act, 1944, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the provisions of the said Act of the present Session in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under section one of the said Act of 1944, under Part I of the Local Government Act, 1948, or under the Local Government (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act, 1954.—[Mr. Deedes.]

11.55 p.m.

Mr. G. Brown: I rise now because I think that the House really wants to hear from the Financial Secretary. The fundamental point is why the Government have chosen to change the method of financing rural water supplies when we are leaving so many other things of a comparable nature upon the old basis. The third line of the Money Resolution says:
it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the provisions of the said Act …
I want to ask the Financial Secretary—and I hope that he will not be discouraged by the presence of the deputy Chief Whip from answering me; I saw a little muttering going on which shook me, but we are still masters of our own procedure and deputy Chief Whips do


not control us—why it is held to be expedient to pay additional sums for water by carrying it upon a long-term loan basis, whereas it is not expedient to pay for heavy water in that way. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government could not answer the question, but we should be told something about it by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
Secondly, I should like him to tell us whether the Money Resolution as at present drawn will preclude the putting down of Amendments during the Committee stage, in the sense argued by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), to exclude the past agreements which have been entered into in this matter and, thirdly, perhaps he will tell us—since the hon. Gentleman has already indicated that the effect of the Bill will be to shorten the strides that we are taking in regard to the carrying of water to the rural areas and sewerage away from them—if he will be open to accept further Amendments upon this subject during the Committee stage.

Mr. T. Fraser: We are asked as a Committee of the House of Commons to approve the Financial Resolution, which appears on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. Member the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Surely he is treating the Committee with gross discourtesy if he fails to respond to a request made by any hon. Member for an explanation why the Government have chosen to employ a financial instrument of this kind. I have risen to give the hon. Gentleman time to collect his thoughts. He has technically moved the Money Resolution, but he has not seen fit to rise in order to explain it. He has not said a word. Surely he will tell us why it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Bill of which we have just passed the Second Reading, and why we should pay for our rural water supplies and sewerage by hire purchase rather than by a lump sum.
The Parliamentary Secretary did not pretend to give us all the information. He said that we had accepted the system of periodic payments in education, housing and hospitals; but so had we in 1944. The financing out of the Money

Resolution is a change from what the Coalition Government decided in 1944. Can he explain why his Department has decided upon that change? This has nothing to do with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government or with the Scottish Office, and nobody pretends that it has. It has nothing to do with the provision of rural water supplies; only with the financing of the provision of water supplies and sewerage in rural areas.
12 midnight.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury is surely in a position to justify this Money Resolution to a Committee of the House of Commons. If he is not, he is asking for the sack—he has resigned his office. Having been appointed recently, the Financial Secretary puts this Motion on the Order Paper. That he is not able to utter one word on it is treating the House of Commons with gross discourtesy. The hon. Gentleman has no title to retain his high office.
He has obviously had sufficient time to collect his thoughts and to consult the brief which he surely has on this matter. Brief or no brief, he has a responsibility to this Committee which he can only discharge by giving an explanation of the Motion which he has put upon the Paper.

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. Deedes: Mr. Deedes rose——

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Deedes: There are two points on which an answer has been asked for. On the first, I am able to give an answer. In reply to the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), any Amendment he likes to put forward will not be excluded from the Committee stage by the terms of the Financial Resolution. On the second point, I think hon. Members have been trying to extend the general trend of the debate on to the Money Resolution. They may or may not be satisfied with what I said, but they cannot raise what has happened and ask for an alternative explanation.

Mr. G. Brown: We are in Committee, and I still ask the Financial Secretary for an answer, since the Parliamentary Secretary cannot answer us. If we have to we shall sit here for a long time. The deputy Chief Whip would be well-


advised to ask the Financial Secretary to disregard the earlier advice he gave him, and to answer us.
On what basis is it decided that it is expedient to incur additional cost for financing rural water supplies and sewerage by long-term loans, and not to apply the same doctrine to other things? On what principle has the Treasury decided to do it in respect of this one service? Perhaps the Financial Secretary will tell us.

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. T. Fraser: The Committee cannot let the hon. Gentleman get away with this. I am surprised that his own hon. Friends are not protesting. He brought this Motion before the House. The Parliamentary Secretary has said that we are continuing the debate that we have already had. We have always, in a way, continued the Second Reading debate on a Bill when we have discussed the Money Resolution, the instrument by which any costs falling upon the Exchequer are provided for. The Financial Secretary must tell us.

Mr. Brown: It is his business to tell us.

Mr. Fraser: We know about the way that housing, education and other local government services are financed. We know all about that, but we also know that in 1944 Parliament passed an Act providing for greatly increased grants for the provision of rural water supplies and sewerage. We know that something was done 10 years earlier in 1934, but it was very little. However, a new provision was introduced in 1944. We know that in some Acts of Parliament since 1944 there have been amendments of the 1944 Act.
The authors of the 1944 Act knew all about the way in which local authority housing and education were financed. Because this was a service which was less burdensome to the Exchequer, they decided to discharge the Government's responsibility by means of lump sum payments in respect of each scheme either in the course of completion or at the point of completion. But for some reason or other, the present Government have now decided to depart from that procedure. We ask a simple question: Why?
It is no answer to say that this puts rural water supplies on the same basis as housing and education. The Government in 1944 decided to put rural water supplies on a different basis because it was less burdensome. It is no answer to say that the change puts this service on the same basis as housing and education. If it is a sound principle to put all Government financed projects on this basis, we are entitled to ask why heavy water, atom bombs and the whole arms programme are not dealt with on a hire purchase basis. We cannot go into that, of course——

The Chairman: The hon. Gentleman cannot go into anything of that kind. The House has decided on the Second Reading of the Bill, and it is not in order for the hon. Gentleman to deal with that matter.

Mr. Fraser: But am I not in order, Sir Charles, in Committee of the whole House, to deal with this matter on a Motion in the name of the Financial Secretary, which reads as follows:
To move the following in Committee of the whole House under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees) [Queen's Recommendation to be signified]:—"—
which has already been done—
Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage [Money]: That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the requirements of the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Act, 1944, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the provisions of the said Act of the present Session in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under section one of the said Act of 1944, under Part I of the Local Government Act, 1948, or under the Local Government (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act, 1954.
That is the Motion which has been put on the Order Paper by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I do not think we are being at all obstreperous or difficult or unreasonable in asking that the Financial Secretary should speak to his own Motion and tell us why he has brought a Motion of this character before a Committee of the House of Commons.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke): I will after the hon. Gentleman has sat down.

Mr. Fraser: The hon. Gentleman says he will after I have sat down. This is the second time that I have been on my feet, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper has also risen to ask the


Financial Secretary to speak to his Motion. He now seems willing to talk. In the circumstances, I will resume my seat. I ask him to tell us simply and plainly, why the change? Why this Motion?

Mr. H. Brooke: Perhaps I can help the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown). He said earlier this evening that he had been a member of the "Junior Ministers' Union." I think he must have resigned from that union, because he has forgotten the rules. The rules which have been applicable here throughout the period of his Government and back for more than 30 years are that when a Financial Resolution of this kind appears on the Order Paper, it appears in the name of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury but it is actually the Departmental Minister in charge of the Bill who takes charge of the Money Resolution.
The Resolution was not moved by me this evening. It was moved by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, but I wish to help the Committee and, if he will allow me, I wish to answer the main question which the right hon. Gentleman put to me. I cannot debate over again the whole principle of the Bill, which has been decided. In the Money Resolution we are simply empowering the Committee to arrive at certain decisions which have a financial implication. The Money Resolution does that precisely and does no more than that. As my hon. Friend has said, it does not cut out the sort of Amendment which the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) wished to move. It is in fine with the principle of the Bill, which is to assimilate the financial arrangements for water with those which are already operative in the case of housing and education. That has been decided——

Mr. G. Brown: By whom?

Mr. Brooke: By the House. The House decided it a few minutes ago on Second Reading. The Money Resolution now enables the House—and the Bill has been committed to a Standing Committee of the House—to discuss the matter in further detail, as I trust will happen.
When the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) asks me to explain why a similar system is not extended throughout the whole defence field, I must ask

them to await the defence debate next week or to make their speeches on some more suitable occasion. I think I should be not only out of order but also out of tune with the feeling of the Committee if I embarked on such a large exposition at 12 minutes past midnight.

Mr. Brown: The Committee will agree that the persistence of my hon. Friend and myself has been worth while in that it has persuaded the Financial Secretary that he was capable of speaking on his own Motion.
The doctrine that Financial Resolutions are put down in the Financial Secretary's name only as a matter of form and that, although it reads on the Order Paper "Mr. Henry Brooke to move," in fact somebody else moves it, is a new doctrine which has never been known in my ten years in the House. Since you allowed the hon. Gentleman to make the point, Sir Charles, perhaps you will allow me to answer him. In the whole period of office of the Labour Government, it was never accepted that the Financial Secretary was entitled to sit tight, to let somebody else nod his head and to say that was enough.
We are very glad to have got the Financial Secretary to his feet to speak on his own Motion. On the whole, we regard it as important in the interests of Parliament that when hon. Members put down Motions they should at some stage be prepared to defend them—and that goes for Financial Resolutions and other Motions.
I understand that we are not to be precluded in Committee from moving Amendments to exclude past arrangements entered into from the operations of the Bill. It is important that that should be registered. Although the Financial Secretary is still not willing to explain why this one field has been selected for a course of action which seems highly arguable, I gather from what he said that we shall be able to raise that matter, too, in Committee, and in view of the very lucid explanation which he has given of those two points and in view of the fact that we have now got him modestly to come out of his retirement, we are prepared to let the Financial Resolution go through.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolution to be reported this day.

NATIONAL SERVICE BILL

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

Clause 1.—(Application of act.)

12.15 a.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart: I beg to move, in page 1, line 15, after "if" to insert:
except in the case of a person employed in the merchant navy.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Collins) who had hoped to move this Amendment are, unfortunately, unable to be in the House at this hour. I therefore venture to move the Amendment in their place.
This Amendment puts its finger on the one point in this Bill about which there was any doubt or dispute. The main purpose of the Bill is to prevent any person who ought to do his National Service from dodging his liability. We are all in support of that purpose and want to see the Bill go through, but, by a curious chance, the Bill could have a totally different effect in addition to the one which is obviously intended. One way for a person to dodge National Service is to be out of the country at a certain period of his life. Therefore this Bill is mainly concerned with people who are out of the country for certain periods. But there is a quite different section of the community who may also be out of the country for certain periods. They are merchant seamen. In that one respect the merchant seaman, oddly enough, resembles the type of person who tries to dodge his National Service as he may be out of the country for certain periods.
Therefore, a Bill intended for a most admirable purpose may have a wholly undesirable result of causing someone who has done the nation excellent service in the Merchant Navy to have additional and quite unreasonable burdens put on him. In Committee this matter was put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) and others to the Government and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour heard most sympathetically what we had to say. Since then he has done us the courtesy

of acquainting us by letter of the further inquiries the Government have made into the technical and legal difficulties involved.
I realise that it is going to be extremely difficult so to alter this Measure as to make quite certain that no merchant seaman will suffer by it without opening such gaps in the Measure as would destroy its main and very desirable purpose. But my hon. Friends felt it right, and I agreed with them, to put down an Amendment in this form on Report stage. If recently the Government have been able to give the matter further consideration and arrive at a solution they can inform us. If the hon. Gentleman says that after the fullest consideration the Government cannot feel that this Amendment would do what we all want and it is impossible to devise an Amendment which would—if his argument is that it is impossible to give a merchant seaman absolute legal security—I hope he will add that the Act will not make the position of the seaman any worse. I trust the hon. Gentleman will make it clear, not only on his own behalf but on behalf of his right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Labour and of the Government as a whole, that in any administrative action they take in the process of call-up no one who is bona fide a merchant seaman will be in any way worse off because the House has passed this Bill.
I think the hon. Gentleman knows that a great many people working in the Merchant Navy have been concerned about this Bill. We are not raising a mere technicality here. What we want is the most categorical and definite statement, so that if at any future time, by some inadvertence, somebody in the Merchant Navy should be entrapped in the meshes of the Bill, it would be possible for him to appeal to his Member of Parliament, for the matter to be raised in this House, and for there to be a statement in black and white to which any Member raising such a case could appeal.
I think I am not going beyond what my hon. Friends would agree to when I say that if we can have a statement as clear and as categorical as that they will be willing to accept the view that it may not be possible actually to amend the Bill. I await with interest what the hon. Gentleman may be able to tell us on this matter.

Mr. Hugh Delargy: I beg to second the Amendment.
There seems to be no one else present to second this Amendment. The Parliamentary Secretary will recall that another Amendment, not quite in these terms, much more rigid than this one, was moved in Committee. He refused it, and I gave him my support, as against my hon. Friends, because my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Collins) mentioned in the Amendment a definite period of service that merchant seamen ought to perform before they are exempted. I think the period of two years was mentioned. That was one of the reasons why the Parliamentary Secretary refused the Amendment, and for that reason, and that reason alone, we did not press the Amendment to a Division in Committee.
The more I think of it the more do I become convinced that some special exemption really ought to be made for merchant seamen. It is said against that, that there are other categories such as miners and agricultural labourers who are also exempted after the age of 26 years under the Act. I agree, of course, that special legislation should be made for such categories of workers. What I cannot see is the logic of those who say that the identical, the same rigid legislation ought to be made for merchant seamen.
I think special legislation may be made for certain workers because we are all, of course, in agreement that miners and agricultural workers are essential to the nation's economy and that, therefore, special legislation should be made for them. Nevertheless, miners and agricultural workers do have certain advantages that merchant seamen do not have. They can enjoy their home life, for instance, whereas the merchant seamen are away from home for long periods of time. At some time or another the Government should go into this matter of arranging some certain period—I do not say what it ought to be—of time served at sea which would automatically exempt merchant seamen from military service. However, that is not the point at issue tonight.
If the Government could not accept a period of two years, I should have thought

they could have accepted this Amendment, which is wide in reference and quite innocuous. My hon. Friend has said that he and I and the rest of us would be satisfied by some categorical statement by the Government tonight that the position of merchant seamen will not be made any worse by the Bill. I would not go as far as that. What the Government can do, if they do not accept the Amendment, is to say that administratively it will be arranged that merchant seamen will be left outside the ambit of the Bill. What we should have liked to have seen would have been legal protection for merchant seamen. I cannot see how they can be legally protected unless this Amendment is accepted by the Government. Nevertheless for reasons given by my hon. Friend. I second it.

Mr. Kenneth Thompson: I have no wish to detain the House, or to differ from the hon. Gentlemen who have moved and seconded the Amendment, but I should like to take the opportunity of expressing to the Parliamentary Secretary my personal appreciation, and the appreciation of those who as merchant seamen are personally concerned in this problem, of the care and thought he has given to trying to devise a way of writing into the Bill an Amendment which would protect their rights and interests in this matter.
This is a most difficult matter to define. The fact that the Amendment is drawn so widely and will spread its effects beyond the limits which we all have in mind is surely an example of how difficult it is to write into a statute precisely what we all want. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service has gone to great pains to put into the Bill precisely what we all want to do. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. Stewart) for his assurance that it will be sufficient if my hon. Friend will give the House a categorical statement of the fact that the interests of merchant seamen are preserved in the Bill. I think that we can all be satisfied that what we have in mind has been protected and preserved.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service (Mr. Harold Watkinson): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart), the hon. Member for


Thurrock (Mr. Delargy)—who supported me in Committee—and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. K. Thompson) for drawing attention to this point of substance. We have all tried very hard to see whether something could not be written into the Bill because, as the hon. Member for Thurrock put it, that would place the matter beyond all doubt.
In my various researches I found words which the then Minister of Labour used when he spoke on the National Service Bill, as it then was, in 1947. I use them because they cannot be put in a better way. He said:
We are satisfied that if we start statutory deferments for one section as against another we shall only land ourselves into further difficulties …
That is exactly what we found. He went on to say:
It is quite true there will not always be the same Minister at the head of the Department, but the Minister has to lay it down that we shall follow the intentions of the House."—[Official Report, 21st May, 1947; Vol. 437, c. 2398.]
That is a very important point, and that is what hon. Gentlemen are asking me to do now.
Having consulted expert aid, I cannot devise an Amendment which is legally and satisfactorily water-tight. Therefore I can only respond to the Amendment on the Order Paper by laying down again clearly what administrative action we propose to take, on behalf of my right hon. and learned Friend, as other Ministers before him have done. By far the great majority of men who pursue their civilian life by administrative discretion are not in the Merchant Navy, and there are some 165,000 at the moment. The hon. Member for Fulham, East pointed out, however, that it is only merchant seamen whose calling takes them out of the country at the relevant date with which the Bill deals.
The bona fide seaman is not in our view an evader because his job may take him out of the country at the relevant time. We accept that the working of this Bill will not worsen his position under National Service compared with what it is today. Therefore, I can give a clear pledge on behalf of my right hon. and learned Friend and the Government that we will see that he is not put in any worse case under the Bill than he

would have been had it not been passed. We will see that he is not prejudiced or put in worse case merely because his calling rightly takes him out of the country at the relevant date.
I do not think that I can go further. I hope that is plain and satisfactory to hon. Members, and I hope that under these terms the hon. Member for Fulham, East and the hon. Member for Thurrock will agree not to press the Amendment.

Mr. M. Stewart: The House is indebted to the Parliamentary Secretary for his clear and unequivocal statement. In view of it, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Bill read the Third time and passed.

REQUISITIONED HOUSES AND HOUSING (AMENDMENT) [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to repeal the power to requisition land for housing purposes under Defence Regulations and transfer to local authorities in England and Wales the right to possession of requisitioned houses for a limited period, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid, it is expedient to authorise—

A. The payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase in the sums payable out of such moneys under any other enactment which may be attributable to provisions of the said Act of the present Session—

(1) transferring to local authorities the right to possession of land in England and Wales used or held for use for housing purposes under emergency powers, and enabling those authorities to retain possession of such land until the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and sixty;
(2) regulating the use, retention and release of such land, and making provision for matters connected therewith, including pro vision for payments to be made by the said authorities to owners of such land, for the application thereto of enactments relating to requisitioned land, and for the purchase of the land by the local authority in certain cases: 
(3) requiring contributions to be made to the housing revenue account in respect of certain houses leased or purchased by the said authorities.

B. The payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of sums required by the Minister of Housing and Local Government for making the following payments in respect of expenditure of the said local authorities, that is to say:—

(1) sums equal to any compensation paid by those authorities in respect of such land


as aforesaid under paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of section two of the Compensation (Defence) Act, 1939, or under any agreement for the payment of compensation in lieu of compensation under that paragraph (including any such compensation which would be so paid if the local authority were not at the material time the owners of the land);
(2) contributions in respect of any deficit incurred by those authorities (as assessed by the said Minister) in connection with such land while in their possession under the said Act of the present Session, and in respect of payments made by those authorities to owners of such land under provisions of the said Act enabling such owners to accept as statutory tenant of a dwelling the person occupying it as licensee of the local authority, at the following rate, that is to say—

(a) in respect of deficit incurred and payments falling to be made in the period beginning with the commencement of the said Act of the present Session and ending with the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and fifty-six, one hundred per cent.;
(b)in respect of deficit incurred and payments falling to be made in the years ending with the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven to nineteen hundred and sixty inclusive, seventy-five per cent.;

(3) special grants to such authorities, pay able at the discretion of the said Minister, with the consent of the Treasury, and of such amounts as he may, with the like con sent, determine, in respect of the year ending with the thirty-first day of March, nine teen hundred and fifty-seven or any subsequent financial year;
(4) contributions in respect of any deficit (as estimated by the said Minister in accordance with the provisions of the said Act of the present Session) likely to be incurred in respect of houses leased or purchased by the said authorities and approved by the Minister in accordance with the said Act, of an amount equal to seventy-five per cent. of that deficit and payable for the following period, that is to say: —

(a) in the case of a house taken on lease, the term of the lease or ten years, whichever is the shorter; and
(b) in the case of a house purchased, a period of twenty years.

C. The repayment into the Exchequer, out of moneys provided by Parliament—

(1) of the aggregate amount remaining outstanding on the first day of April, nine teen hundred and fifty-five, of all sums issued before that date out of the Consolidated Fund under subsection (1) of section eight of the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act, 1944, together with interest on the said aggregate amount, by seven equal annual instalments;
(2) of any sums issued as aforesaid after the said date, by payments made before the

expiration of the financial year in which those sums are issued,

and the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of sums paid into the Exchequer as mentioned in this paragraph and the application of sums so issued in redemption or payment of debt, or, in so far as they represent interest, towards meeting such part of the annual charges for the National Debt as represents interest.

D. The payment into the Exchequer of any sums received by the said Minister in pursuance of any provisions of the said Act of the present Session.

Resolution agreed to.

TRAFFIC CONGESTION, LONDON

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Legh.]

12.30 a.m.

Mr. Ronald Russell: The subject that I wish to raise on the Adjournment tonight is that of traffic congestion in the London area. I am only sorry that it has come on at such a late hour, although I make no apology for raising it again, as many of my hon. Friends and I have done in the last year or so, because it is a vitally important subject. Unless something is done fairly quickly to ease the position, I fear that traffic in the centre of London will come to a standstill. That does not prevent my saying how sorry I am to my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary for keeping him up so late and hoping that tomorrow night, when he will also be replying to the Adjournment debate, he will be a little luckier.
There are many long-term and short-term plans which have been produced in the last few years for solving London's traffic problem. I should like tonight to draw attention to one or two of the defects of the long-term plans and bring in one or two of the short-term plans also. My first query about some of the long-term plans is the attitude of my hon. Friend's Department to the question of roundabouts. Many small roundabouts at various places in the London area have proved themselves failures from the viewpoint of easing the traffic problem, and I think that before long there will be many more instances where the same thing happens.
To quote only two examples, roundabouts on the North Circular Road at


Brent Bridge and Neasden Circus have recently had to be replaced by traffic signals because they were too small to deal with the large volume of traffic using those two junctions. I hope that, in the light of the experience at those two points, the Ministry will reconsider seriously every road improvement scheme which involves a roundabout of that kind, because many others are already getting jammed up at certain times of the day.
One has only to go outside this House at about a quarter to six in the evening to find that the roundabout system in Parliament Square is usually at a complete standstill, sometimes for five or ten minutes; and the same thing is apt to happen in the early morning traffic hours between, say, half past nine and ten o'clock. The roundabout at the west end of Lambeth Bridge—again, not far from here—also gets very congested at certain periods of the day. As for Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner, those places are liable to get congested at any time of the day, and at certain times they, like the others I have mentioned, also result in traffic being brought almost to a standstill. I am very glad that my right hon. Friend the Minister has announced that he is reconsidering the Hyde Park Boulevard scheme, for there is a great danger of the proposed roundabout system being completely inadequate.
I know that a traffic census has recently been taken by officers of the Road Research Laboratory to ascertain the volume of traffic at certain parts of the present Hyde Park Corner roundabout system, and I hope that the figures will be studied with great care. A great deal of study has been given to this problem in the United States, where it has been found in practice, I think, that 1,800 vehicles an hour is about the maximum practical limit that a roundabout can deal with, no matter what its size, when one takes into consideration the convenience of the traffic as well as its volume.
I suggest that the north-west corner of the proposed roundabout at Hyde Park Corner, when the boulevard scheme is completed, will be far too short to allow the necessary weaving of traffic which comes along the new road from Park Lane and wants to go along Constitution Hill, with the traffic coming

eastwards from Knightsbridge and wanting to go along Piccadilly. On the map it appears to be a very short space to allow for that to be done comfortably.
Hyde Park Corner is the worst place in London to drive round. The worst part of it is the west side, near St. George's Hospital, where it is uphill. I would prefer to wait for a red light to turn to green rather than have to weave through the traffic at that side of the roundabout. One has to look to both sides, making sure that no one is trying to overtake on the left as one looks for a car on the right. At the same time one has to take one hand from the steering wheel to be able to use the handbrake if one has to stop. It is the most tantalising place to drive round in London. The system gives rise to the instinct of selfishness in drivers, discouraging them from giving way to others. I would much prefer traffic lights.
Some years ago the London County Council passed a proposal for a roundabout at the Elephant and Castle. The proposal was, I believe, for a raised roundabout, so that pedestrians passed beneath it. There was an enormous roundabout, of the same kind as those in many other places, which might prove to be too small for the volume of traffic. I hope that scheme will be reconsidered in the light of the tests made at Hyde Park Corner. If mistakes are made roundabouts eventually have to be replaced by traffic lights. That is a costly business. I mentioned the removal of those at Brent Bridge and Neasden Circus. I was astonished to find that to remove the Brent Bridge roundabout, replace the road, and make any necessary road improvements cost £20,000—to be exact, £19,896. That is a stupendous figure for a comparatively small piece of work—moving a mound, laying out the road, and laying new concrete. The roundabout at Neasden Circus, which was slightly bigger, cost £24,000.
I wrote to the Minister last week hoping to get details of how the money was spent. I appreciate that the figures are not available because I may not have given him enough time. These fantastic costs mean that if 50 roundabouts were found to be inadequate and had to be replaced by traffic-lights the cost would be £1 million. That money could be much better spent on getting the right road improvement from the first.
I hope that this question of roundabouts will be looked at seriously, taking a view not two or three years ahead, but ten years ahead. I always regret that the plans for Hendon Way, where it crosses the North Circular Road, which were made some 30 years ago, did not include a fly-over junction. That would have saved a great deal of money. What was done cannot be undone at anything like the cost of the original work.
I turn to the question of one-way streets. I find the Ministry of Transport and the authorities in general very resistant to the idea of introducing one-way streets. I know from experience how long it sometimes takes. About 30 years ago I suggested in a letter to "The Times", which was the only means I had of voicing my opinions in those days, that Harley Street and Wimpole Street should be made into one-way streets. I had the joy, when I was a member of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee about 21 years later, of being on the committee when the proposal was approved.
It took years before such obvious places as Grosvenor Square and Belgrave Square could be made one-way streets. I know that the volume of traffic in those two squares is not very great, but it makes for much easier driving, especially on a wet night when the roads are inclined to shine, to know that there is a one-way system and that one need only look for traffic from certain directions rather than for two-way traffic all round, when one never knows exactly where a vehicle might come from.
Nearly all squares should have one-way systems, irrespective of the volume of traffic. There are many small squares—two are Connaught Square and Hyde Park Square, Paddington—which do not carry very much traffic but it would make conditions much easier and reduce the number of traffic intersection points if one-way regulations were introduced. In a place like Russell Square it would cause a great upheaval, because one side of the square, Southampton Row, is a main road; but there are many other squares where one-way traffic would ease driving conditions.
If we are to solve the London traffic problem from a short-term point of view we ought to have one-way working on a much larger scale. Last Autumn the

Emperor of Ethiopia paid a State visit to this country and his reception and journey from Victoria to Buckingham Palace caused a large part of the West End to be made into a temporary one-way traffic system. I imagine that something similar happens when Parliament is opened, though I am usually inside this building then and not outside.
On the occasion of the State visit even part of Charing Cross Road had one-way instead of two-way traffic. I had to make a journey from Piccadilly Circus to the Strand at that time and instead of being delayed by enormous traffic blocks, caused from traffic being diverted from the St. James' Park area as I expected, I found that with the one-way working the journey took a very short time. It was a great improvement on the normal arrangement.
A great deal of consideration should be given to the introduction of more one-way regulations even though in some places such a step may sound revolutionary. I believe that it would ease congestion and certainly it would reduce the number of points at which traffic has to intersect. In a certain area of Paris I understand that there are over 600 one-way streets. I would not mind betting that there are nothing like that number in a corresponding area in London. There is not all the difference that is sometimes made out between road conditions in Paris and London from the point of view of the lay-out of the streets. Even a street of the width of the Rue de Rivoli has one-way working, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary knows. That would suggest that if Regent Street were in Paris it would be a one-way thoroughfare. The progress made in Paris ought to be taken into account when we consider the appalling problem in London.
Another point about one-way working which is a great advantage is that it enables a progressive system of traffic signals to be installed. One does not get stopped at one signal, get past the next, and get held up at the third. One gets a clear run through at a predetermined speed, perhaps 20 or 25 miles an hour, without the frustrating delays which occur under the present system. I feel it would be worth while trying out a number of schemes, even if they did not succeed. I know that the Westminster Chamber of Commerce recently discussed


a one-way working scheme with the Ministry, and that it has been turned down. It may be that some parts of it were impracticable, but unless we try out some of these schemes we shall never make any progress.
We shall never be able to find out whether they work if we never experiment. I do not think that there is anything wrong in trying out such schemes and, if they are found inadequate, going back to a two-way system. No loss of face on the part of the Ministry or anyone else should be involved if a one-way working scheme were tried and proved a failure.
I want to say a few words about the "no waiting" regulations. I know that my hon. Friend will say that they are working quite satisfactorily in some of the main thoroughfares, such as Oxford Street and Piccadilly. I do not dispute that fact, but I think that they are a complete failure in some of the side streets, such as Jermyn Street, Dover Street and Albemarle Street. What the solution of the traffic jam which sometimes occurs in Jermyn Street early in the morning is going to be, I do not know—unless it is to do away with the so-called "no-waiting" regulations and introduce unilateral waiting regulations instead.
In answer to a Question of mine the other day, the Minister said that he was experimenting with unilateral waiting regulations at the north end of Dover Street, but I hope it will be extended to the whole of Dover Street and Albemarle Street before long, because I find that at any time of the day vehicles are parked indiscriminately on both sides of the road, and this narrows the carriageway. I have come to the end of my time if I am to allow my hon. Friend the right amount of time to reply. I feel that this is an urgent problem which, before long, if we do not do something fairly drastic about it, will cause traffic to be brought to a standstill in central areas of London. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to hold out some prospect of something being done.

12.47 a.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Hugh Molson): I never complain when my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) refers to the difficulties that we encounter

in connection with London traffic. He has in the past served upon the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, which is a statutory body, upon which we rely very much for help and advice in dealing with this difficult problem.
Since my right hon. Friend became Minister I can truthfully say that there is no matter to which he has given more time and thought than to the problem of London traffic. For a long time I felt that with every week that passed London traffic was getting worse, but I would make the modest claim tonight that since the introduction of the last batch of traffic regulations there has been a quite perceptible improvement. Today, although the position is not yet satisfactory—far from it—on the whole traffic in the West End of London is moving more easily than it was about six months ago.
My hon. Friend has referred to four or five main points, and I shall try to deal with them briefly. He doubted the desirability of roundabouts. It is essential that roundabouts should be well designed and large. He mentioned two roundabouts in his constituency, which were built before the war and, as a result of the great increase in traffic that has taken place, have been found to be too small and have therefore had to be removed. I am sorry the cost was so great. It is always costly to carry out alterations to the arrangements on the roads.
My hon. Friend asked for an explanation of the high cost of removing the roundabout at Brent Bridge. I cannot give him the full information. The average number of men employed was 15. No overtime was worked, but 10 full days were lost by wet weather and other causes, and on other occasions an hour or two was lost for the same reason.
Generally speaking, we believe that if roundabouts are large enough and are well designed they are the best way of dealing with a large volume of traffic. They have the effect of reducing the speed of all traffic to the same rate, and therefore they result in a great reduction in the number of vehicle accidents. I admit that where they are not large enough to cope with the volume of traffic expected they are not satisfactory.
My right hon. Friend has already informed the House of the changes that


are intended at Hyde Park Corner. He has the whole matter under review. As regards the Elephant and Castle, I would refer to the answer to the Question put by my hon. Friend recently, in which my right hon. Friend said that he was satisfied that a roundabout was the best solution.
We are not opposed to the principle of one-way streets. In many cases they are extremely useful. Whereas there are 16 points of conflict with vehicles where two streets intersect with two-way working in each, these are reduced to four where streets with one-way working intersect. This generally results in an increased capacity for dealing with traffic. In all suitable cases we are in favour of the introduction of one-way working.
There are two great disadvantages. Complicated one-way systems are difficult for all but local drivers to understand. They need complicated signposting and they are unpopular with front-agers. Where mainly local traffic is concerned, the distance which has to be travelled in order to arrive at a place not far away is sometimes disproportionately large.
My hon. Friend underestimated very much the congestion and obstacle to that traffic caused by motor car parking in London. Our view is that the problem of the long-term parker in London roads is the most serious with which we have to cope. Where streets are very wide, a certain amount of parking by the roadside can be allowed without any im-

mediate blockage ensuing, but in many streets, and certainly in St. James's Street at luncheon time, one often sees vehicles abandoned by what I call the rather selfish motorist who drives to London and leaves his vehicle parked on the Queen's Highway for the whole day, and those which arrive to deliver goods and who park on the road. It is of the utmost importance that we should deal with the parking problem.
My hon. Friend has previously asked me about Jermyn Street, He did so on 7th July last. We do not consider that 11.30 is a sacrosanct hour for commencing to restrict parking, but at the present time we think it best to have one regular hour certainly throughout the centre of London. As I have said on a previous occasion, the Commissioner of Police tries to ensure that there are police on duty in Jermyn Street in the early hours of the morning before the "no parking" regulations come into effect. We are very conscious that things in Jermyn Street are not entirely satisfactory, and both the police and my right hon. Friend have the matter under review.
Finally, we are constantly considering, in consultation with the police, what can be done to improve the circulation of traffic in London, and I am always grateful to my hon. Friend when he has suggestions to make.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to One o'clock.